eyes the flat jade of a cat's. He swept into a bow, his ~ like a courtier's. "No sweet lan~age of mMe could t- ....

your guardian stones to betray you. ~e one to the east t..~- perament of a crone."

"~at's why I placed her opposite the door. She won't bend f{~ te~ or nonsense." Elaira sat up, mantied in blankets and a m,~g~{~- cen~ amowed Z~JJ o/bronze ~aiL "You're FeHows~p of ~ven ?"

For all her bravado, tile import heMrid tgat query revealed a tremor of distress. ~aradmon straightened, still the posering lant. "Sweet lady, I'm the fou~ to be granted the privilege of me{'~- ing with you face-to-face."

A sMver seemed to mn through the woman's thM &ame, thou~.,l~ sfie masked ~e artease behind movement and ~cked ~e rough we, up under her chq. "Should I thank ~thvir? Or doesn't fie usuaii) dispatch shades to pay una~ounced social calls while his victims are disadvantaged and in bed?"

Touched to delight by her quick, stabbing humor, ~aradmon raised Ms peaked eyebrows. "For you, like the cat born with all of its claws, there exists no Mequity, lady." His image lit with the wicked, bright smile he used to deflect L~aMe's baiting. "I see where your stones acquired their ripe tongues."

"Were they kind, they would have barred you from en~." Now the tremor caught hold, let the Sorcerer read into the deep, ragged pa~ behind her effort of seamless composure. "If you've come to speak of Arithon s'Ffale~, be warned. My Prime Matriarch is his implacable enemy, and I but a tool to her hand."

~aradmon flowed ~to pacMg, carelessly le~g one shM pass through an oak stool that lay in Ms path. "You are never a tool, lady, 544.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

except by allowance or consent." His glance darted questingly side- wards.

The enchantress had gloved !~oth her hands in the blanket and pressed the cloth to her mouth, as if the gesture flamed a bastion against her own thoughtless and desperate speech. There were tears, bright as jewels, brimming her eyelids. Yet the pride in her silence was stark iron. "! was a six-year-old fool in trouble with Morvain's authorities," she admitted. Her voice held its timbre through sheer stubborn strength. "Nor are four crotchety old stones from a river bottom quite proof against the might of the Skyron aquamarine. Since my vows are not revocable, why are you here?"

"Why indeed?" Kharadmon pressed, and waited, poised utterly still.

But the woman did not ask for his help to unravel the conundrum he posed her. Raised self-reliant, too resourceful to seek pity, she low- ered her fingers and laced them, sure and still, on the tent of her drawn-up knees. "Say what you came here to tell me, since you've already stolen my peace."

Kharadmon spun into vexed agitation, the breeze of his passage gone bitingly blunt as the frost that sang through his consonants.

"Your prince has just learned that Koriani spellcraft can raise Lysaer's essence as a fetch. In fact, your Prime Senior laid a trap to ensnare him. Her minions used that cheating, uncivil trick of spellcraft at Riverton, to sad and disastrous effect. Earl Jieret's past war captain fell to his sworn liege's steel."

Elaira drew in a shaken breath, stilled as white marble in the dark- ness. "Ath's mercy, Caolle? Arithon's sword took down Caolle? Then what you have is a man torn by grief and entrapped in a web of despair. Is that why you came here? For advice to contain the Prince of Rathain's bitter conscience?"

Kharadmon stilled again, wholly noncommittal, but the volume of his silence became mistaken for consent.

Eyes shut, her hair like wound bronze tanged with rubbed glints where the ends curled, Elaira said slowly, "As I love him, I can tell you the truth. Give him his release from your blood oath sworn at Athir."

At Kharadmon's specious startlement, she stared back, nerveless as coal-fired steel. "Oh, I knew of his oath on the hour it happened.

You had to have seen. Since the healing spells we engaged in tandem at Merior, an empathic link still remains open between us."

"You could use that to spare him the pitfalls, as you choose,"

Kharadmon ventured in angling argument to coax fresh review of her logic.

345.

]ANNY WU~TS.

But Elaira shook her head. "I won't be his crutch. He needs none of my weakness. Nor will he thrive on any feminine instinct that gives him the child's role through mothering a grown man's mature pain. I urge you instead, return his free will. Give back his choice to own life or death. As things stand now, the very fact his hand is forced will only add coals to his anguish." The flex in her modulation snapped for a second, and revealed all the tenderness beneath. "Ath, I know him, none better. He has strengths and depths even he doesn't yet acknowledge. I believe with all my heart he will endure and survive even a grievous remorse such as this."

Kharadmon pressed her. "You could risk his life on that premise?"

Elaira stared back at him, level. "I'd let him risk his life. There was no evil done. He did not succumb to the Mistwraith by choice. Nor would he endorse a forced act of insanity by turning the craven and destroying the royal heritage Caolle sacrificed himself to preserve."

"He has lost everything," Kharadmon pointed out.

Elaira swallowed, fighting down the passionate need to give way, to lean on the Sorcerer's power and presence and find ease for her own stricken heartache. "His Grace of Rathain has already lost every- thing twice before this. What has changed since the banks of Tal Quorin?"

"Brave lady," Kharadmon conceded, forced to yield at last before the unflinching moral fiber of her love, and her relentless display of raw courage. "I see we have also underrated your strengths. Be very sure, I shall argue against any one of us making the same mistake ever again." His image snuffed out, leaving a turning, chill vortex of air that even the drafts treated deferentially. "With your stones' per- mission, I will leave you a ward, that your Seniors not know I have been here."

Then he was gone, in the space of a breath sped on northward, where, between Daon Ramon Barrens and the deep glens of Halwyth- wood his charge was to extend his appeal to Earl Jieret, caithdein of Rathain.

Behind him, he left the hollow drum of the rain and the cry of the winds on the lonely, dark moors of Araethura. Huddled in blankets, shot through with sorrows, Elaira released the hot flood of tears she would not shed in his presence. Her vows to her order left her no grace and no quarter. A child and a prophecy yet hung in the balance.

Worse than death, she dreaded her inevitable fate, that on the day she next met with Arithon s'Ffalenn, in all likelihood she would be forced by her Prime to arrange for his final betrayal.

346.

Early Spring 5653 Legacy The rain still smoked down over the marshlands of Mogg's Fen, ruf- fling the pools to a sheen like dark pearl, and greening the spears of the sedges. Through the passage of day and into the next night, the singsong language of running water seemed to leach endless tracks through Mearn's dreams. Undone in delirium, he raged aloud for Dharkaron Avenger to give him a place in Sithaer where, if he suf- fered, his nerves might be spared from the trials of incessant mois- tare.

Hands touched him, pressed him back and down into a madden- ing mire of clinging, smothering dampness. Mearn shouted. His protest emerged muffled against the rag somebody forced to his mouth.

A voice that splintered into a roar like flood tide implored him to be silent. Since he could not swear his outrage, or make his will known, he struggled, inflamed by the red rage of fever. Nobody suc- cored him. A woman came instead, her hair strung with feathers. Red cheeked, dark eyed, and wrinkled as a harridan, she dealt his wet cheek a r'mging, hard slap, then shoved a sticky wad of medicinal herbs into his mouth. Then more hands clamped his jaw while foul juices numbed his tongue, and the world spat white sparks and tamed black.

Later, he rubbed open sleep-crusted eyes. Detached from all rage by debilitating weakness, he blinked. The sky had rearranged from weeping gray clouds to an opaque roof of pressed mud and sticks. He 347.

~ANNY WURTS.

swallowed, and discovered his throat scraped nearly rav~ :~d tongue furred in what felt like the wrack from a bird's nest.

Off to his right, somebody groaned. Mearn shut sv~'t~ll~~ aching and limp, and too spent to unravel the straits that had '~.!t flattened and disoriented with illness. His sinuses felt w,~dde~~ xxitt~ red-hot rags. Someone he could not recall had peeled his leather~ from his body. A throw of sewn rabbit skins covered his nakedness. If the tanning was poor, his clogged head mercifully blocked his sense of smell. He lay, too inert to fight his discomfort, though the silky fur clung to his sweat-runneled neck, and gave rise to pestilent itches.

Reason eventually assembled the awareness that he sprawled on dank clay, enclosed by the dim mud-daub walls of a fenland~,r', hovel. The dwelling had no windows, just one door of rough set into an uneven frame of peeled logs. A rushlight burned in ,~ lined with slate. The groans of human misery he had heard it~ sleep were not any figment of dreaming. Arranged like bund le~ inert cloth around him, he made out the shadowy forms of fact's limbs strapped in splints and stained bandages.

Mearn wrinkled his nose in distaste. He had seen enough field hos- pitals to recognize the close and fetid quarters where men thrashed in the throes of wound fever.

"Ath, how did I get here?" he croaked out in cankerous irritation.

He struggled to sit up. Assaulted by immediate, wheeling faintness, he swore, then started halfway out of his skin as somebody gripped his left shoulder.

"Lie easy. You're safe." The deep voice of assurance was male, and sure in the grain as burled oak. "The fenlanders brought you among friends."

Meam swiveled his head, his neck still mired in the garroting cling of damp fur. "Maenol? Lord s'Gannley of Camris?" Horrible, chilling fear ran him through. He might already be too late, with the casual- ties around him brought down by the very Alliance cordon he had tried and failed to thwart by his timely warning. "How long have I been ill?"

"A day and a night." The hold on him released, and the backlit shadow at his side revealed itself as the square, solid presence of the caithdein of Tysan. Sympathetically aware of Mearn's burning ques- tion, he answered in the same measured steadiness, "The men here were hurt several days ago. Their tactics delayed the Alliance's first march on Riverton."

Not too late; sapped by relief, Mearn clawed the offending fur from his throat and rubbed his lids to clear his clogged vision. Even dim 348.

FUGI?IVE PRINCE.

~'~~t~light showed him too much. The young man who held chieftain- ship of Tysan's clans looked more worn, more drawn, his dependable ~ature fretted into a hagridden mask of desperation since their meet- ,.~g on the tideflats by Hanshire. Strips of white-and-black hide laced ~t~~ his clan braid signified mourning for the blood cousins who had ~ied to take warning to the Master of Shadow in Riverton. Raw .,~~d ~rance remained, of a stripe to rival a mountain for tenacity.

"My sorrows are yours, for the lives of your kinfolk," Mearn began. "I see you have word of their fate already."

The sturdy line of the shoulders under Maenol's mud-spattered t~:~thers stayed unbowed. He said gravely, "You informed me your- self, though not in the mannered condolence you wished."

~'s Mearn stiffened, horrified, the Lord of Camris held him down.

No offense. Quite the contrary. In delirium, your rude opinion of i,',iverton's mayor and council delivered a more satisfying consola- tion." Nor was this caithdein's settled patience in any way forced as he ~vaited for an invalid to compose scattered thoughts and rejoin the tumbling mainstream of life.

Mearn drew in a breath like dipped fire. "Sky and earth! How much was I raving? The maps~"

"They are here. Your message of the Alliance invasion has reached us." Maenol's pale eyes, intense as his mother's, saw deeper than most through a difficulty. In response to an agonized, unspoken ques- tion, he said with sparse clarity, "When the fenlanders brought you in, you carried three map cases with seven sets of tactical instructions.

If that's your concern, we have already acted."

Mearn sank back amid the drowning clasp of the furs. A hard chill speared through him. He had to struggle to keep his teeth from chat- tering. "Too late," he ground out. "I stumbled into that Alliance encampment by chance. By the time I lifted those plans, Lysaer's cor- don was already in place and closing."

The wind whipped against the gapped planks in the door. Traced in flickering rushlight, Maenol leaned forward, his rawboned hands clasped to his drawn-up knees. "Not all is lost. We've set lines in defense, and no few traps to slow the Alliance advance. Hounds can't trail in these fenlands. Many of the women and young ones may yet find escape through the mountains." Born of harsh times and a cruel practicality, he faced the unflinching truth with an unyielding equa- nimity. "We still have our hidden refuge in the Thaldein passes. That will just have to serve to safeguard those bloodlines that survive through another generation."

Mearn swallowed, silenced by the overwhelming weight of sorrows 349.

~ANNY WURTS.

Maenol tacitly faced without speech: that the high mountain defiles might foil the Alliance campaign for a short time. The caithdein knew, none better, that long-term safety for his people could not be assured without the ships just torn beyond reach by the Koriani conspiracy at Riverton.

"You stay to fight," Mearn managed at last. "Why?"

In the dimness, the hiss of the rushlight became the thread upon which existence loomed its firm fabric. A wounded man groaned. The wind outside bespoke more rain pending, and time stood as the com- fortless enemy. Maenol regarded his interlaced fingers. His features were too grim for his twenty-five years, and the conviction that shaped the steel of his character lent his answer the grit of scaled car- bon. "As Tysan's caithdein how could I leave? We are kingless. The land's charter, therefore, becomes mine to uphold, in line with my ancestors before me. I will not see living acreage carved up into boundaries, or trees and streams and hillsides exchanged as spiritless deeds of writ that ignorant men believe can be bought and sold with- out penalty. Earth's life and town greed share no common ground, and I have no stomach for compromise."

"Brother," Mearn said. He fought a hand free of encumbering furs and touched Maenol's wrist in the sympathy of their common her- itage. In Third Age Year One, clanblood had been consecrated to uphold the Paravian law of unity which kept the earth's mystery intact. The world's bounty and heritage were the binding fiber to hold Ath's design, and no man's to unwind for the divisive reasons of domination and profit.

"We are not yet defeated." Maenol shifted, straightened, the dig- nity knit into the blood and the bone of him like the dauntless, stilled majesty the rooted oak must show the honed axe blade. "While there is one patch of forest in Tysan still free, I stay to resist the wrong thinking that threatens the peace of the Fellowship's compact."

"My heart would stand with you," Mearn s'Brydion said fiercely.

"Save us, you cannot!" Maenol's objection turned forceful.

"Lysaer's Alliance has no respect for limitations. The day must never come, that your duke in Alestron should face the same forces of destruction our cursed prince has unleashed in Rathain and Tysan."

Too large a spirit for the cramped gloom of the hovel, Maenol exhorted in sorrow, "Our people are scattered. Every man and woman who carries a bow has a vengeance arrow with the name of Lysaer s'Ilessid engraved on the point. There is no joy in this impasse.

I implore you, do nothing. The very suspicion you had betrayed Lysaer's interests would break a most fragile balance. That would 350.

FUGITIVE I~RIN(~E.

,~,~'ve nothing, but call down sure ruin on your fugitive clans in Mel- "A sword in the hand would feel better, nonetheless." Mearn's r~'ame sagged into his rough pallet of rushes, but his eyes held the banked fires of resentment. "The truth gives no ease. Not when the ~~'ind is likely to blow the Alliance's troubles our way anyhow." Hat- ~:~ the fact he must deliver ill news while lying flat on his back, he ~,~ve terse explanation why those engraved arrows were unlikely to ~.~d the man they were fashioned to bring down. "Koriani duplicity ~n far deeper than we knew."

Diminished by the caithdein's sudden, prepared stillness, Mearn faltered. The chills as his fever broke racked him in waves, and the :?!fficult words he must now assemble weighed like piled rock on his ~,est. "Lysaer sailed for Corith, not Riverton," he forced out at length.

!'nned now under Maenol's unnerving attention, he related how ~,, ~riani design had enspelled a fetch of Lysaer s'Ilessid to awaken the '.:istwraith's geas and drive Arithon s'Ffalenn into madness. "The spells did exactly as the witches had planned, and set him to purpose- less flight."

The pause as Tysan's caithdein measured the root cause for the ruin of his people, contained a stunned force of sorrow to etch the moment into wretched clarity. The next breath Maenol drew could have made the air bleed, or the rain to change into salt tears in midfall.

When the first shock let go, and speech could be managed, the caithdein of Tysan had but one word. "Why?"

Mearn shook his head, without answer. "Who knows the mind of Morriel Prime? Her works always have run contrary to Fellowship conceiTIS."

One of the wounded stirred from thick sleep. Maenol arose. All stripped grace and silent economy of movement, he crossed the hovel, dipped water from a leather pail, then borrowed the fen- woman's long-handled horn cup and made rotrods. For the power of responsibility he carried, he wore neither ornament nor jewel, nor any token of finery to set him apart from his scouts. His brown, weathered hands offered drink to the wotmded without care for rank.

He gave encouragement as he could to those whose voices were fret- ful. With the natural dignity of a man who had never been pampered by servants, he rearranged soiled bedding for others who had slipped beyond conscious awareness.

On the cot, helpless and weak in the sweat of his broken fever, Mearn s'Brydion watched the care the caithdein held for his doomed people. He knew, then, whose hands had tended him through his ]ANN WURTS.

own illness. The rage rose up, blistering hot with the bite of an unen- durable grief. He had read every one of those maps before had seen how improbable lay the margin for hope. Truth and tactics held no ambiguities. Of the clansmen who had errbarked t0 delay Lysaer's Alliance from containing Arithon s'Ffalenn in River- ton, few would escape to reach safety. The routes into the rnor~~t~ins from Caithwood would be sealed by armed troops within days. ~hat would leave only the coastline, already set for blockade at Mainmere by the selfsame ships that, by Arithon's intervention, could have opened the way for clan freedom.

In the squalid, dense gloom of a fenlander's hovel, the sturdy caithdein in his ordinary leathers seemed unmarked by the immanent finger of fate. Divested of his weapons, except for a hunting knife, he paused on one knee to laugh at a woman's rough joke. He flipped back his braid of ash-colored hair, abandoned to a moment of boyish embarrassment as an older woman half-hidden in shadow called something back in rejoinder.

"My grandmother should be alive to hear that," Maenol said.

gers still busy, he replaced a slipped bandage in frowning tion. Then, as if disaster were not present and closing to put an ~.t~!

the spirited joys of small byplay, he moved on, in meticulou ....

attending the needs of his wounded.

Meam shut his eyes, too agonized to watch. Though his fami ,, ,,, not fugitive, he knew forestborn customs too well not to shrink. It~ t!

wilds, the clan codes of survival imposed since the uprising h~..~ space for pity or compromise. Any scout here who was unfit t( '., would not be permitted to fall into the hands of the enemy. Wi;h Alliance troops marching in force on Mogg's Fen, those wound.~.,~ would ask for a mercy stroke rather than burden their hale compmaior~.

Under the faltering flare of the rushlight, whether man or w()mi~ each face showed determined calm in the face of such shatteri'.:,z uncertainty. It was the outsider among them who battled the urg stem fate and scream outrage for the injustice imposed by a pri~,., turned false to his bloodline.

When Maenol had finished, he returned to Mearn's side, bearit~ the sewn-leather bucket and horn dipper. The citrine gleam of the rushlight traced the stubble on his cheek, and the gaps tom in the fringe on his deerskin where thongs had been cut off at need to mend, or tie bandages or tourniquets. Lives and blood would be given as generously to defend the needs of the land.

Mearn labored to regather the lost thread of his composure. Before accepting the same care from the hands of the man who was Tysan's 352.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

reigning caithdein, he demanded in rankling honesty, "My Lord of Camris, why are you still here?"

The unaccustomed use of his formal title touched the younger man to stiff wariness. He crouched. The water dipper all but snapped as his hand clenched, and his face showed a startled and sudden vulner- ability that exposed the youth in his twenty-five years. Carefully, slowly, he set down the water. Clan habit did not waste the gifts of the earth, nor take life's bounty for granted. He settled on his heels, strong wrists draped on his knees, while the carnelian glow of the rushlight mapped the small scabs ripped by briars, and the deeper scars left by war on his knuckles. In the same grave steadiness that flinched from no hardship, he answered, "! had to ask a boon of you, in behalf of my clans."

Thirst forgotten, Mearn refused the wringing weakness in his limbs and elbowed himself half-erect. Inadequately braced against the wadded mat of the rushes, he shook back the stuck ends of his hair and matched the other man's courage headlong. "Whatever you need will be given. My word on s'Brydion clan honor."

Maenol looked away, perhaps overcome. "! accept that word from you. Ath bless your willing heart." He paused, then added through a harsh burr of regret, "Sleep now. We'll speak of this later."

He arose, clasped his benefactor's shoulder in salute. Moved by uncharacteristic reticence, he averted his direct glance, and Mearn, in suspicion that the caithdein was weeping, did not press, but left the man to his dignified privacy.

The fever had left him light-headed in any case. Drained from his effort to keep focused composure, he gave in to the sapping demand of his flesh and lay back. Despite his fierce worry and his musty, uncomfortable nest of damp fur, sleep came like an ambush and dropped a black cloth over his thought and his senses.