"Don't trouble," he murmured to the scout come to wake him.

"Guard yourself as you can."

Edging the salt flats, en route to their next seacoast rendezvous to embark with three more of Arithon's purloined ships, none of his party slept disarmed.

The rest of his band stirred amid fog-choked hummocks, as hair- trigger wary as he. Their discipline became their young chieftain's sole pride. No chink of weapons and nary a torch marked their move- ments. Their presence blended like chaff upon burlap with the rise of the inland dunes and their low crests, fringed with wind-harried sedges. Stained dark with walnut, their exposed hands and faces melted into the rank stands of cattails and brush. Yet here, even the most covert care could not ensure their survival. Fourteen leagues south of Hanshire, their picked destination a hidden tidal estuary, 262.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

their foray offered choice bait to headhunters ranging in search of scalp trophies, or worse, the double bounty routinely paid by the crown to muscle the galleymen's oars.

Breezes still spiked with the late season's chill wisped the loose strands from Maenol's clan braid. Every sense trained alert, he breathed in the lushness of green-budding willow, and the brackish fish taint of the bogs. The threat was still closing. Around him, the shrilling pipe of spring peepers fell silent before the oncoming ham- mer of hoofbeats.

"Just one light-boned horse," relayed Jyce, whose barrel-stout frame was small help in an ambush, but whose hearing made up for his clumsiness. "Not a destrier."

Maenol stayed wrapped in habitual silence, too spare with words to confer. Armed patrols seldom swept this landscape by night, unless they were dealt provocation; and over these reed-choked, stream-tangled lowlands, a war-bred charger would mire too deeply to canter.

"Nobody moves out of cover," Maenol said in a terse whisper. "We might face a traveler strayed from the road. With luck, he'll pass by without finding us."

Yet the rider came on, relentless. The swish of bent willows and the splash of muddy shallows marked an arrow-straight course through the bogs. On Maenol's signal, men prepared to ease steel in a sound- less draw from their scabbards.

Then a low, trilling whistle signaled warning to the sentries. No chance-met arrival, the horseman reined in his foam-flecked mare. He dismounted, sweat drenched himself and half-winded, and shoved through the last stand of reeds under escort by one of Maenol's own watch scouts. "Tysan's caithdein, is he here?"

Any courier who knew to search these wilds for that name could bear only calamitous news.

"More slave raids," Maenol surmised. He stepped forward, gut tight and braced, his bloodless grip jammed on his sword.

The sardonic male voice which hailed from misty darkness belonged to no Korias clansman. "No. Not this time." The rider resumed with hoarse urgency, the peppery snap of his eastshore accent now clear enough to be recognized. "A trap's to be sprung on Arithon at Riverton."

Maenol advanced another step, piqued by an unwelcome hunch.

"Mearn? Mearn s'Brydion? Merciful Ath! You have no business risk- ing yourself here, even for such word as this."

"No time for passed messages. These tidings can't wait." Mearn's 263.

]ANNY ~7URT$.

chin jerked up in a spasm of startlement as a second scout slipped from the brush at his elbow to take his reins and attend his blown horse. Prince Lysaer's increased bount/es to slavers had pitched the forestborn clans to a wariness even sworn friends found unnerving.

Lord Maenol gave no apology, but pinned his close scrutiny 0n the mare. Relief eased some of the bite from his manner as he marked a rented hack with nondescript markings, and tack without blazt~ned trappings. The clan envoy from Alestron had been canny enough to seize every desperate precaution. Marshy soil would hold a shod horse's track for days. Skannt's headhunters might pick up his back trail. If they chose to pursue, the animal must be cut loose for expedi- ence, or else bled to de,~,f.b J~*.I~e.~ d,ra~' t,r~e ~ctd~ to Pair' cry.

In the s'Brydion style of rapid-fire summary, Mearn broke the news that had brought him. "Lysaer's returned." He caught the caithdei~t's wrist in a grasp like wound wire and drew him aside to speak pri- vately. "You can't imagine worse. His Grace has reached Avenor exen as we speak."

A woman scout on the sidelines overheard. "That's not possible!"

Others echoed her incredulity. To the north, the mouth of Instrell Bay and every northern harbor remained locked in the grip of green ice; the mountain route through Camris was sealed shut with drifts, The severity and strength of a lingering winter left the West Road trade routes impassable.

"Tornir Peaks are deadly, razed by avalanche at this season, and our scouts from the Thaldeins say the Orlan pass will stay blocked thirty days past the equinox," Jyce protested.

"Yes. That's the lynchpin of Lysaer's strategy." Mearn plung~. d ahead, straitly grim. "I presumed the very same, a near-fatal mistak~.

Lysaer's forged a liaison with the Koriani witches. They parted the floes with spellcraft to row a galley into Mincress, then breached ti~c~ Fellowship's wards to bring him southwest through Teal's gap."

"You claim he's crossed Tornir Peaks through the Sorcerer's Pre- serve?" the woman cried into stricken silence. "That's insanity!" X,.~ mortal company could survive that terrain. Every savage pack of fir~,~ breathing Khadrim held confined by the Sorcerers would desceded, and tear an armed supply train to pieces.

"The Prince of the Light's in Avenor," Mearn insisted. "He had arcane guidance, and could have arrived no other way."

The outspoken scout swore. Her young chieftain met the disastrc, c~s news like unflinching oak, hands firm on the hilts of his weapons.

Over the rattle of breeze through stiff sedges, through the mufflh~, salt-heavy mist, he said only, "Give us more detail, if you will."

264.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

His caithdein's composure and straight stance revealed nothing.

Unable to measure his courage in darkness, Mearn matched his tone, talking fast. "The prince arrived in close secrecy. The town's not been informed. The outrider's servant I bribed for the gossip said his Grace planned a conference with the inner cabal of his council. He will board a waiting galley and put to sea by this dawn's tide, then slip ashore again at Hanshire. You can expect him to take the direct route by road and rejoin his specialized assault troop."

Before Maenol's steadiness, Mearn ticked off a trip-hammer listing of hard facts. The company came on special levy from Rathain, a divi- sion of Etarran field guard, handpicked, and deadly at infighting.

These had already marched south under orders to cordon the roads and the ferries, and cut off all routes out of Riverton.

"Seven days," Tysan's caithdein extrapolated. "You say that's all we have to break through with a message, and let friends spirit Arithon out."

"You've got less," Mearn rebutted. "The elite company bypassed Avenor. They took remounts with them and parted from Lysaer's guard past the Melor River bridge. They've gone straight across coun- try. I traveled at speed through the night out of hope the high spate off the peaks may mire their passage by Mogg's Fen."

Maenol seized the gist. The torrent fed by the snowmelt might open a frightfully narrow margin for clansmen who knew the high ground to engage and delay the advance of the enemy company.

"You'll need to move like Sithaer's winged demons. Damned well !

wish I didn't need to be here," Mearn added, vehement. Yet he could not shirk inescapable facts. More lay at risk than his s'Brydion family honor. The next shipyard launching was due a week hence. Bold plans under way aimed for clan crews to abscond with not one, but three stolen vessels. The temptation to expose Arithon's interests for reward would be great for a man without a blood stake on the out- come.

"Anyone notices where you've gone, and wh~ you could be put to the sword," Maenol said, then instantly shouldered the risk of that debt. "You have my free welcome to take sanctuary among my clans."

Mearn snorted a disdainful laugh through the graying, salt- burdened air. "Don't mind my back. I left town in fine order. My chambers are barred, with word out I'm drunk to incapacity. For added assurance, three whores fill my bed. The house servant's keep- ing them occupied, blissful man. That much gold in their hands, I'll just have to hope the trulls won't exhaust him too soon, nor care whose prick stands to greet them."

265.

JANN ~7 ~1R T $.

"Come or go as you. please, then. Make free with our stores if you're hungry, but hurry. You'll know we can brook no delay." Too rushed for more than that bare thread of courtesy, Maenol stepped aside to mete out instructions to his war captain. "No help for it, we're going to get bloodied. Send runners in relays. We raise call t0 arms. Also, word must be won through to Riverton to warn Arithon.

Spend lives as you must. We'll see no free children if those dogs of Etarrans pin down Rathain's prince in their cordon."

As he caught wind of Meam's clipped request to grain and refresh his tired horse, Lord Maenol spun back. "Where are you bound betore morning?"

The youngest s'Brydion sibling bared his teeth in acidic self-mockery.

"South, wherever else? I have Lysaer's note of safe conduct. Should your efforts fail in the fenlands, this fresh Etarran company has no due that I'm prostrate, easing a thick head with doxies. If they won't be weaned from bullheaded p~,judice, I'll just indulge them and uphold my ill-bred reputation."

"For harebrained acts and wild barbarism? I see." Ma~nol regarded him, thoughtful, his mustache quirked at an angle that almost smoothed the furrows from his brow. "As Duke Bransian's envoy and Avenor's pledged ally, you'll seed uncivil chaos in the chain of Lysaer's field command?" Before Mearn could muster a mettlesome retort, he burst into deep-throated laughter. "Go softly. You'll call down your brother's ducal vengeance on my head if you pass beneath the Wheel on this foray."

Mearn eyed him askance. A lethal spark of fury smoldered through his lean frame as he ended discussion with a shrug. "Better worry more whether Arithon's killed."

While the Alliance of Light gathered strength through past feuds and political incentives, both men held no illusion: the Master of Shadow became their last hope to stave off decimation of clan blood- lines.

266.

Early Spring 5653 Downfall On the same misted daybreak that saw Maenol's scouts race east to attempt their desperate stand by Mogg's Fen, the first gold blush of light rinsed the high battlements of the tower where Princess Talith of Avenor was sequestered.

As always she opened her eyes to deep gloom. The strapped shut- ters leaked only pinpricks of light. Airless and chill, the flinty dank- ness of the brick enclosed the fusty odors of soot and beeswax, the lavender sprigs in her clothes chest too refined to drive the must of mildew from her blankets. Talith lay still, never so agonized by her plight that she gave way to helpless resignation. Where once she had commanded chattering maids to serve up scalding tea and the choice snippets of the night's gossip, now she had only her ears to record the ongoing events outside. Born and bred a pedigree Etarran, she would lie dead before she renounced her belief she could wrest back her place in court politics.

On calm mornings such as this, at the tide's turn, the exchanges of oaths between the stevedores and crown customs men winnowed up from the harborside. By the number of epithets relating to oxen, she deduced that a carter backed his dray down to the dockside. Talith heard the exchange of bawdy jokes, then laughter, which faded once the inspection was complete. An excise officer duly stamped the bill of lading; then a grinding, hollow thunder tore the quiet, as the dock- workers off-loaded the wainload of barrels. Left to conjecture, Talith wondered if the casks held water for a ship's stores, or whether 267.

' : . ,"i ~'-; u another cargo from the brewer's rolled down the quay to hold of a trade galley.

A ruled sliver of sunshine struck through a crack, the only snippet of natural light to brighten her chamber all day. The slow hours of her isolation racked her like torture and stretched highbred nerves to drawn glass. As if to compound that sawing misery, the bastard growing in her belly, contrived by liaison with a worshipful palace page, made her feel drawn and queasy. Talith cherished the still inter- val after each dawn, and the cozy warmth of the box bed. All too soon the chambermaid who served as her warden would burst in with wash water and firewood. Made arrogant by her position of propri- ety, the woman always grumbled in monotone while her fussy, brusque hands girded the princess into chilly clothes to endure another day of grinding emptiness.

Talith became afraid if she retorted in frustration, the screams she had smothered through four terrible years would escape all restraint, and leave her mewling with madness. If she could not hear the trills of skylarks at the meadows' edge, the spring brought her swifts and cliff swallows, nesting under the eaves on the battlement. Through their sprightly chirps, she heard the wind freshen and snap the ban- ners streaming from their poles on the vaulted dome of the council hall. The bustle from the docks became erased by the gusts, replaced by the clo15 of hooves on the paving as a tight, fast-moving cavalcade cut through the daily grind of farm wagons crossing to market.

An officer called. His querulous order was answered by the defer- ent footfalls of a servant. The ponderous, leaved panels to the lower vestibule were unbarred to the uneasy bristle of activity which spoke of an arriving delegation.

Once, Talith would have arisen to pace the floor in a froth of balked curiosity. Prolonged incarceration had not sapped her spirit. Female wisdom and cold rage let her stop beating caged wings long since.

She had learned in her desperate patience to rechannel the cutting edge of her mind to more subtle venues of subterfuge.

She shrugged off the empty comfort of her blankets, now impatient for the maid's prompt arrival. The woman had a haughty temper, when provoked. She was ambitious and vain, covetous of her posi- tion as a high priest's clandestine mistress. Rich all her life, and born to position, Talith knew by her huntress's instinct which jabs would rankle the most. The maid was a gold-digging, servant-class whore, and her nettled retorts to a princess's needling could sometimes spring knowledge of outside events.

Yet the mincing, slippered step and piqued puffs of exhalation she 268.

FUGITIVE.

expected came replaced by the grating tread of boots, embedded against the rumble of masculine voices.

Talith exploded to her feet. She snatched a quilted robe from a chairback, and whirled, heart pounding, to confront the charcoal shadow which demarked the barred arch of the doorway.

The approaching steps ground inexorably upward. An explosion of pure rage made her blood race like magma, for this invasion came with no polite notice and no dignity; then that ire seized to ice, as the steps outside halted and isolated her maid's obsequious soprano from the stairwell.

"... missed her courses, my brave lord. The linens for such stayed unstained these two months, though on my word, no man entered her bedchamber. Each night, I slept across the threshold to the upper staircase. Below me, always, were the guards sworn to serve the divine Light. They answer to no man but your exalted self, and to his high eminence, Cerebeld."

A man murmured something placating. Then the steps paused.

The bar clashed and the panel swung inward.

Barefoot in her nightshift and the dangling toggles of a robe just barely donned, Princess Talith received no warning beyond a dazo zling scintillance of diamonds. Then a damascened glint of pale hair shone by the rags of new flame in the sconce. A lightning clap to unsuspecting rock, her senses imprinted the form of the man who entered her chamber.

Least likely of visitors, her s'Ilessid husband strode in unan- nounced, prematurely returned from his state delegation to Etarra.

Four years had changed him, Talith saw, eyes narrowed to the influx of light, and her arrested breathing resumed to sped rhythm from the recoil kick of shocked nerves. His stainless white dress, sim- ple jewels, and lethal charm had been welded into new purpose. He had always had majesty. Now, presence lay on him like gold thread in velvet, or fine silk wrapped over tempered wire. His eyes of water- rinsed sapphire upon her showed no shadow of strain. On the con- trary, as if passionate love had never aroused his desire, his mannered tranquillity held a luminous focus that seemed to command the dead air to forced rarity.

Despite her contempt, Talith felt the force of him ripple her flesh to a stabbing prickle of awe.

She could not sustain the keen edge of her anger Every bastion of her cynical, Etarran pride wavered. Nor could she tear her gaze from his features. Almost, she lost to the moonstruck fool's impulse which urged her to rush into his arms. If Lysaer saw her weakness, he had 269.

JANNY WUI~TS.

not come to gloat. His face stayed expressionless, its lordly, fair s~- roetry remote in perfection as a spirit carved from light and air.

Talith could have wept then for unjust debasement, that his mere reappearance held the power to sear her shunned heart like a brand.

She wrestled to shore up her fractured composure. A wrung moment passed while she recouped resilience, then noticed the other three officia:$ who mounted the landing behind him.

Raw fury then stained her cheeks heated pink, that her unjust state of incarceration should be made the public butt of a formal audience.

She realized in cringing embarrassment that her hands fumbled to fasten the front of her robe, but failed in their task through her rack- ing torment of raw need.

However much she had cause to resent Lysaer, her love was the stronger, a force as unruly as the surge of the tide. Left weak at the knees, she had nothing else left but her verbal wits and a hamstrung drive to vent outrage.

"How like a man and a craven, to arrive with a bootlicking dog pack to heel," Talith said. "Or have you come in overdressed force to collect my soiled linen for the laundry girl? The gallants in Etarra would think it the rage, to see royal~ wait on a servant."

Lysaer seemed not to hear. Lordly and unruffled as masterworked crystal, he assayed neither riposte nor civil greeting, but addressed .:i her instead with the incisive clari~ she had seen him use once on an officer who had deserted. "We'll have no display of false modest~, woman. Your robe must come off. Strip your night rail as well. I'm informed you are bearing. Shall we see?"

His train of officials pattered in from the stairwell, no doubt sum- moned to stand legal witness. The sallow-faced leader with the stalk- ing tread swept her with obsidian hard eyes, his voluminous cloak of ermine and gold fretted with chains and wired pearls. The sunwheel erablazoned his cowled robe of office, and one fist, squared blunt as a mason's maul, clutched a scepter encrusted with citrines. Behind him minced the stooped person of the High Seneschal, the sills of his cheekbones windburned to old leather by days of inclement travel.

Beyond middle age, and s~mied by events outside the ossified mores of state politics, he gave the cracked stone in the floor his discoretired contemplation. Vorrice came last, as the Light's new-made instrument to seek out and destroy pet~ sorcery. He gave her a leering, suspi- cious inspection, preened as a fighting cock hung with steel spurs for a match with inferior rivals.

Talith felt their collective awareness, avid as crows lined up in an abattoir waiting to gorge on a carcass.

270.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

Her tone was syrup as she let fly her unwounded contempt.

"Whose shame shall we celebrate? Yours, gutless prince, for the pathetic excuse of my barrenness?"

Lysaer never blinked. "You heard my command. I need not repeat myself." A crook of his finger brought the traitorous handmaid scur- rying to assist her disrobing.

Talith raised her chin, too proud to give way to a physical struggle, or invite them to lay hands on in force. Nor would she assist the ignominy herself. Doll stiff, she maintained every breathtaking inch of her bearing, while the maid tugged and circled, divesting each layer of her garments.

The kiss of chill air was too sharp to hide. Shivering as the cloth slithered down and bared her defenseless shoulders, Talith relied upon words for her knives. "If there's truth to this claim, dare you brand yourself cuckold?"

The handmaid recoiled in prim righteousness, ready to repeat her avowal that no man had passed through her guard; yet the princess, her disdain fixed like acid upon Lysaer, gave that unctuous objection no chance. "Why not ring the bells in praise of another miracle? Ath's all-powerful avatar shouldn't balk at a child conceived by sublime intervention. Let your bitch of a watchdog swear by her truth. Give the realm an heir begotten by miracle, and blessed by the glory of the Light. Another lie is scarcely more preposterous than the last. What a stirring opportunity to fan the ardor of your campaign, and win more adulation from the masses."

Lysaer gave back his pitying patience. "I am truth's minion. My born calling can't be sullied by the rags of false gallantry, even to protect your infidelity." His eyes on her stayed an implacable, blued steel. "Nor would I exploit an honest servant's gullibility. The Master of Shadow is at River- ton, and sorcerer enough that he once gained covert entry to the most rig- orously guarded keep on the continent." No one could forget the furor over that, since Duke Bransian's citadel had been widely conside~~d impregnable. Lysaer closed his point. "If you chose to be my enemy's lover, this tower would pose his demonic skills small impediment."

"Had Arithon wished, he'd have done his work earlier, without the inconvenience of skulking." Talith held herself erect, ablaze with the unalloyed arrogance of pedigree, while the plain, dull cloth of her night rail slipped down and puddled around her cold ankles.