Silver clasps sheared off and clanged into the wall to a pattering fall of chipped plaster.

"Stop now!" Dakar snapped. "Don't you realize how closely you just came to shattering the lyranthe Halliron Masterbard passed on as your legacy?"

Arithon used the emerald pommel of his weapon to sweep broken glass off the sill. "That's a touching concern, but irrelevant. My half brother isn't going to lie down and die from the glorious rapture of music." He set his hand on the frame, but Dakar had anticipated.

White sparks ripped out. The branch snare of the spell set to seal off the doorway stung Rathain's prince into recoil. "Curse you for med- dlingS"

"That was your own permission just blistered your skin!" the Mad Prophet cried in correction. "Don't try your birth gift of shadow.

You'll find yourself curbed there, as well." He seized the washbasin and pitcher from the stand, dumped out their contents, and sought for a point of aim by the casement~ "Why not simplify things and hold still?"

The solution required no genius. He need only batter an armed and demented adversary into a state of unconsciousness. The sulky thought followed, that long before, Caolle should have seized the advantage bought out of his desperate diversions. As Arithon's liegeman, the man must try something to bring his sworn charge back in hand.

"You're not speaking," the Mad Prophet accused. "From you, silence never bodes well."

He shied the pitcher, waited for the smash as sword steel fended off porcelain, then winged the basin on a corrected trajectory. That vessel also became deflected by weaponry. Arithon must have seized his sly chance to fetch out his quilloned dagger Dakar met the changed odds with a vexed string of oaths, and fin- ished in plaintive injury. "Two blades make for butchery. You know when I'm drunk I don't even carry a penknife!"

No answer; armed now with both sword and main gauche, Arithon bid to wrest back his mastery of shadow.

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His geas-bent will slashed against sealed restraints and deflected onto the spellbinder. No surprise to Dakar, that the attack brought a fragmenting explosion of agony. Arithon's talent encompassed the command of elemental darkness. He required no effort to raise simple shadows. If a ward of permission denied his access, he need do n0 more than apply testing pressure to wear down the inhibiting stayspell.

Dakar held firm, teeth locked in misery through a pain that plucked him at random. He suffered the bearing, innovative feints as Arithon quested to find weakness. The scalpel-swift slice of each forthright attack hazed him dumb with torment. Wrenched and pulled as though milled in a spate, he hung on, though his senses shut down at each onslaught. Leaching numbness beset his extremi- ties. Next, his balance succumbed to mangling weakness. He toppled.

Only the intervening bulk of the armoire saved his doomed effort to stay upright.

He clung, victim tied to ruthless antagonist through the grant of permission which founded the first rune of stasis. The spell which curbed Arithon from use of his mastery keyed into Dakar's fast- failing strength. No recourse lay open to retaliate. A call for assistance from air or from matter would invite a flank strike from the bard's use of dissonant sound.

"Ath, where is Caolle?" gasped Dakar, as his sight dissolved in a howling rain of white static.

His chest felt cumbered in molten lead. Each nerve end felt dipped in raw acid. The fight had been futile, outmatched from the start, with him pitched alone against an opponent beyond his depth and resilience. Dakar had no genius reserves of bright talent. Only a fool's suicidal tenacity to bear up and sustain under pressure.

"Arithon. Listen." Pain racked the plea to a whisper. "I can't let you go. A sword and a dagger can't stay Lysaer's army. Fight for your sanity, damn you!"

No answer from the creature claimed as Desh-thiere's instrument.

Dakar crumpled. A horrid, sucking pull swallowed his mind as the force of resistance drained him. This was a contest drawn outside of mercy; wise limits were long since abandoned. The only way left to stave off disaster was to borrow off his own life force.

Weeping, Dakar tapped that last well of resource, though he knew the end was upon him. Arithon stayed in thrall to the Mistwraith's dark violence. Already he advanced on his victim. Paralyzed by throttling agony and dizziness, Dakar scarcely tracked his murder- ous, light tread. The dormant spells in the Pararian weapon gave 290.

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mage-sense fair warning of his peril. Air brushed his skin with preter- natural clarity as the blade poised to cleave hapless flesh.

Then the Masterbard's voice, cold as no man ever heard. "Be a dead fool, then, for interference."

The whetted, steel length of Alithiel descended. Dakar shut his eyes. Limp as a hare stunned and stretched for the knife, he kept obdurate hold on his bindings.

"In Earl Jieret's name, leave that spellbinder be!" Metal clanged in a screeching collision and arrested the sword in midfall.

Dakar flinched. Whimpering beneath a trip-hammer exchange of fierce swordplay, he realized a burly figure with a torch had rushed in to claim his defense.

"Merciful Ath!" The prince's gruff liegeman had not abandoned him after all. "Caolle."

"I went for my mail shirt," the clansman flung back by way of testy apology. Harried across the carpet by Arithon's attack, he beat off a rain of furious ripostes with blunt and deliberate competence. The years he had served as Earl Jieret's war captain matched Arithon's fierce brilliance through experience. The pair had sparred often.

Caolle knew his opponent's fast style and quirky, unpardonable tricks. But this was no straightforward match in the open. The mad drive of Desh-thiere's geas set him at extreme disadvantage. The caithdein's sworn man, he dared take no life. His slighter antagonist obeyed no such scruple, but sidestepped and angled to kill. Nor did Caolle have better weapon than his accustomed hand-and-a-half longsword.

In cramped quarters, the blade's greater reach spoiled accuracy.

Close and tight as he parried, the tip clanged off furnishings or stabbed and hung in the curtains. The torch in his left hand spat hellish sparks as he turned the wooden haft to deflect the swift fury of Arithon's dagger hand. Cinders showered the carpet. A sickening reek of singed wool laced the room.

Caolle flicked his wrist to haze off the flame which streamered and singed his leather bracer. Through the clangorous dance of thrust and parry, he resumed his belabored dialogue. "Nor would I fight a pos- sessed demon again without light. You just keep tight hold on those fiend-plaguing shadows." A feint, a disengage; Caolle's sword bat- tered against the smoky sheen of Alithiel, then screamed through a sliding bind. "If I'm blinded in darkness, we're dead men."

A pillow struck the floor, slashed to leaking feathers, close fol- lowed by a crash as the pricket was raked from the nightstand. Caolle slipped as the candle rolled under his boot. "Dakar," he entreated 291.

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through beleaguered balance, "if you aren't injured, please Ath, I need you to move."

Dakar scuttled clear as the fight clattered past him. He coughed sour fumes, swiped sweat from his lashes. "You're oathsworn to Jieret!" he accosted the Teir's'Ffalenn. "Dare you murder the very man who raised your caithdein from boyhood?"

"Never mind parley, his Grace won't hear you!" Caolle grunted. ^ scorching scream tore the air as sheer force of strength cleared his blade from entrapment on Arithon's crossed sword and dagger. The torch absorbed another lunge. Sparks flurried and peppered spilled fragments of glass with pinpoint stars of reflection. "As you love life, prophet, move your fat arse and do something to back up my light."

Roused to the danger, Dakar winnowed up eddies of loose down in a hands and knees scrabble across the chamber.

Backdrop to his effort, a half-snarled curse as a fighter snagged in the bedhangings. Velvet tore. A hacked tassel sliced into the gloom.

Dakar wrenched open a drawer, tossed out papers and pens, but found nothing of use to strike a spark. A toe gouged his calf; Caolle's, in retreat. Again the duelists clashed in attack over the crown of his head. The puddle by the washstand slickened the footing. Caolle slipped, ejaculated a stringent oath as his guard suffered an unlucky break.

Arithon's weapon licked in like black lighting; rang into an impro- vised defense. Blood flew. Caolle sustained a nick above his bracer.

The whirl of his torch barely foiled the following left dagger thrust, while the jerking, snatched flame chased glints across quillon and guard.

Both men felt fatigue. The fight lagged a split second. Dakar, look- ing up, caught a glimpse of green eyes. The prince who was born to s'Ffalenn compassion, whose music could raise tears from stone hearts for generosity, appeared to be vanquished beyond recall. Soul- less, inhuman, the creature who advanced to take down his own liegeman seemed unreal as a fetch wrought into the form of a dread- fully familiar body.

Lips peeled back in murdering ferocity, the Master of Shadow lunged again.

Dakar flung back from that killing bash of steel and cowered behind the clothes chest. "You'll have to disarm him!" If means still existed to salvage Arithon's mind, the Paravian defenses held dor- mant in Alithiel offered the last avenue for hope.

The washstand crashed over. Back and forth, the duel raged, while Caolle's fast-pressed weapon gouged slivers from furnishings, or 292.

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stabbed jagged furrows in plaster. The belling crash of swordplay roused sleepers from their beds. Someone's raised voice shouted from the outer hallway, while weapon clashed to weapon, a tireless roulade of raw fury stitched through the descant jingle of Caolle's mail shirt.

Dakar cursed a head still melon thick from drinking. The din drilled his ears and scattered his labored train of thought. Caolle's cause could not be helped. That quicksilver exchange of thrust and blocking parry confounded his blurred eyesight. His effort to rise was undone by the palsied, nauseated weakness brought on by over- played talent.

Caolle fared no better. Veteran though he was, his strength was not speed, but methodical, polished execution. Rucked carpet and the hazards of upset furnishings presented countless pitfalls to defeat the reach and sweep of his weapon. Again and again he was forced to defer to the darting strikes of Arithon's dagger.

The Mad Prophet snagged the wrapped bundle of the lyranthe, shoved her clear of the fray as clansman and prince sprang apart.

Heaving rasping gulps from exertion, the pair faced off, the stolid, iron-haired veteran like a battered stone buttress, and the Shadow Master opposite, light boned and slim, and possessed of a weasel's poured grace. Blades raised, eye to eye, they stood locked through a measuring pause.

Caolle surveyed his liege, a study that flickered over carriage and mien, and ended infallibly with the hands; a habit begun in contempt and adversity, done now as an unthinking sacrifice in behalf of a prince he had learned to respect. Then its heartbreaking counterpart: the echo of the grave, listening intentness Arithon served those who had won his most difficult trust. All his empathetic gifts of perception stood reversed by the curse. He subjected Caolle to a combing search for the first fatal weakness to exploit.

Against razor tension, some concerned citizen knocked at the door and inquired for the safety of the bard. The latch rattled, foiled by the bar Caolle had dropped as he entered.

Suspension shattered into movement. The renewed, wailing onslaught of metal beat at metal in relentless intent to draw blood.

Arithon's dagger scored once, then twice, as Caolle's sword scythed through the bedhangings. Swagged cloth slowed his counterstroke.

Again the striking main gauche sought his flank.

The clansman parried, squarely in form, but the torch cracked at last under punishment. The lit end sheared away. Shadows wheeled through its arc as the spluttering stub bounced under the clawed feet 293.

of the tipped washstand. Streamered flames lit the towels. The Mad Prophet chose not to stop the conflagration. He owed Caolle better than uncertain light. Since the Laughing Captain's landlord required strong incentive to enforce his house rule against brawling, Dakar hooked the unlit end of the cloth and hurled its burning length across the tossed sheets on the bed.

Fire blossomed. Close walls banked the heat and flung back a hellish glare of light. Smoke billowed, licked through by the flicker of steel. The combatants met and parted in circling concentration. While the racket in the corridor changed pitch to alarm, Caolle ran out of options. Another bind; his wrists flexed in practiced response. Tem- pered steel shrieked and parted, leaving him pinned to the crackling blaze of the mattress.

Dakar perceived the last choice as it happened. "No! Caolle, don't!

Let the smoke haze him dizzy. We can take down your liege as he fal- ters."

But the clansman saw well enough how the stakes lay. He accepted the one fleeting opening and lunged. His sure stroke rammed home through Alithiel's cross guard. Faultless in timing, steadfast in sacri- fice, he recovered his stance, set both hands in leverage, and twisted.

His right side, exposed, took the thrust of the dagger he lacked any weapon to parry. His grunt as cold steel bit under his mail shirt entan- gled with a dissonant outcry of metal: his blade still engaged with Alithiel's cross guard. Falling, his warrior's reflex at last broke the Shadow Master's grip.

The Paravian-made sword arced free.

At that instant, Dakar spoke her Name to engage the bright powers instilled by the centaur who forged her.

Light ripped the air, hard followed by sound, a struck chord to raise the wild elements to exultation. Wrought in a terrible, undying harmony, the note reshaped perception, until earthly existence seemed a shabby reflection to be suffered against loss that carried no tangible name. No one in range of that resonant, clear power proved exempt from its force. Time suspended. Thought and memory and awareness lost meaning. The shattering peal of Ath's primal mystery shocked the tie between spirit and flesh.

Arithon screamed. "Caolle? His voice pierced through the sword's diminished vibrations in a transfixing agony of restored wits. "Ath's mercy on me, Caolle!" He fell to his knees. Undone, distraught, he laid horrified hands on the bleeding wound in his stricken liegeman's side. "Dharkaron strike me, it's death I have dealt for your service."

His remorse rent through the whispered harmonics of the sword's 294.

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fast-fading vibration. Flame light laid bare his terror and his tears as he labored in feverish need to stop the ebb of life beneath his fingers.

"Dakar, in the clothes chest. There are shirts to staunch the wound.

Hurry! Shove my sword in the fire. The blade will be needed for cautery."

Dakar pushed erect, crossed the chamber, but not to fetch rags or follow orders. He recovered the dropped sword. For tragic and sor- rowful necessity, he reversed the grip and struck Arithon a blow on the back of the neck with the pommel.

The Shadow Master dropped in a slackened heap of limbs across the shoulder of his dying liegeman.

"Well done," Caolle gasped. "Now, heave him up and haul him out of here." He paused, rendered silent by a shuddering spasm, then labored through another ragged sentence. "Take his lyranthe. He'll be grieved if he finds we let her burn."

"Caolle," Dakar said. He coughed on rising smoke.

"No! Leave me! You must!" The clansman snatched Dakar's arm in a frightful, harsh fist. "Don't spurn my sworn duty. If Rathain's prince is lost, I have just thrown away all I was ever born to serve."

Dakar scrubbed sweat from his eyes and trembled with anguished denial. "Ath, if I do this, what about Arithon? You know the force of his grief could turn inward and cripple him."

"See it doesn't." Caolle gasped, seized again by a quivering parox- ysm. Eyes shut, jaw clamped, he forced will to prevail against the extremity of agony. "If this is my fate," he resumed, "inform my Lord Jieret that my last service was to fight the Mistwraith at my prince's side." Through a horrible, wrenching lag, he wrestled to draw breath and finish.

"Tell my liege..." As though he sensed refusal in the harrowed quiet of the Mad Prophet's attention, he grew frantic. "Tell him!" He had to speak over the yammering noise as alarmed citizens pounded at the door. "Say to Prince Arithon, when the Fellowship Sorcerers crown a s'Ffalenn descendant as Rathain's high king at Ithamon, on that hour, he will not have failed me."

The bar on the door burst to a flying rain of plaster. Flames fed on draft and leaped high and licked in a roar across the ceiling. "Go!" Caolle begged. "You must, can't you see?"

Shouts hailed from the doorway and thrown water flailed through the murk. Coughing back tears, Dakar bent, found the sword, rammed its scabbardless length through his belt.

"Daelion keep you, I won't let your liege die." The ripped shirt suf- ficed to cover the exposed s'Ffalenn features. The Mad Prophet 295.

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remembered the lyranthe, then caught Arithon's slack wrists and dragged him like deadweight through the smoldering litter of smashed furnishings.

Hands from the corridor reached to assist him. Someone astute hung the lyranthe strap which had fallen askew off of his shoulder.

Dakar snatched breath for thanks and responded to the landlord's hysterical inquiry.

"A thief," he improvised as someone's servant stepped in to help shoulder his wrapped royal burden. "Broke in and knifed the bard's servant. Smashed out the window to make his escape." Before anyone thought to question the lie, he entreated, "My master's man still lies in there, wounded. I beg of you, do what you can for him."

Two bystanders arrived to help fight the fire bent at once to soak cloth and mask their faces. Dakar never knew if they managed a res- cue. Slave to the demands of desperate necessity, he stumbled on toward the stairs and started down in a dumb fog of misery. To the volunteer bearing Arithon behind, he snapped, "I'll need to borrow a cart from the stable. At once! The bard can't be left on the street, unconscious, and someone needs must fetch a healer."

A stableboy passed off his two slopping buckets and sprinted ahead to commandeer horses and harness. Dakar leaned on the newel, half-blinded by tears. The excuse of the cinders masked his undignified sorrow as he played arcane seals through the smoke. He ensured what he could: the fire would not spread. Through the bed- lam raised by the bucket brigade, his furtive acts of conjury were cer- tain to pass unremarked.

No one would notice his furtive escape, or recall Arithon's precipi- tous departure.

296.

Early Spring 5653 Feint Dawn mists loured over the estuary at Riverton, stained as dirtied fleece where the gate lanterns leaked sulfur light through the gloom.

The company of mud-splashed guards sent to seal the city's north postern established their post in smart expectation of the Prince of the Light's formal entry. The captain entrusted to seal every egress out of Riverton was a stocky, scarred veteran, flushed in the face and run to vile temper from a cross-country march beset by unimaginable diffi- culties.

The last men under orders reached their designated checkpoints at the docks, wharves, and gates through his incandescent drive to mow past upset plans and diversions.

The most recent and diabolically irritating of these still remained, a thorn in his side in the shape of a lean, impertinent clansman. The fel- low knew field war. His laconic, whip-stinging criticism held an accu- racy that shamed the men scarlet and generally fragmented morale.

Flights of high temper seeded shouting between rankled officers and flustered subordinates. Bright eyed, avid, the clansman picked fights.