When Mearn s'Brydion reawakened, the rain had cleared into a chill, gusty night. The rushlight burned now by the cracked open doorway, where a fenwoman bent, stirring fish stew in a cauldron.

She was typical of her breed, built rawboned and short. Hair of an indeterminate color was bundled beneath a string cap. Feathers swung from hoops in her earlobes, and her layered skirts were sewn with dark threads into queer, whorled patterns and luck signs. Three purses made from the shells of marsh turtles dangled from a cincture at her waist, and two raggedy children sucked their fingers and peered from the well of deep shadow behind her. A third infant waved from the carry sack she wore strapped to her back.

353.

JANNY ~URTS.

If her household was typical, her fenlander husband would be far- ing out in his skiff, trapping and fishing for the family.

Mazed in the lassitude left by his illness, Mearn took too long to notice the hovel was emptied of wounded. The furs where the clan scouts had languished were rolled in neat bundles, lashed with fiber twine twisted from wild flax. Maenol s'Gannley was gone, replaced by a toothless elder smoking a root pipe. Beside Mearn's shoulder sat the last of the clansmen, a boy of twelve years. He had blond hair tied into a neat braid, and hands too large for his still-growing frame.

Sword and knife rode in sheaths at his waist. His belt was his only ornament, sewn with simple designs of wooden beads and otter fur.

He waited, stiff backed and composed in the tight, sober silence that came over the young in times of crisis.

Touched by foreboding, Mearn fisted the hand hidden under the covering furs. "My word as given," he said at careful length. "Just what have I bound into promise?"

The boy started. His dark eyes went wide, the pupils dense black as he realized his charge was awake. He said nothing, but instead drew two letters out of his jerkin and passed them across to Meam's keeping. Then he rose. He seemed all knobby joints, rail thin for his growth. Despite tender age, he knew how to move to accommodate the adult weapons he carried. His voice had just started the change to a man's bass timbre, yet the cracking child's treble which intruded as he addressed the fenwife put no crimp at all on his dignity.

"Mistress," he requested, then thanked her generosity in fair dialect as she surrendered the use of her rushlight.

The flame jerked and fluttered as the boy brought the wick. Mearn ran his thumb over the wafer of wax, impressed with the ancient seal employed by Tysan's caithdein for personal use through the centuries of fugitive exile. The choice of devise confirmed a most risky neces- sity, unrelieved by the fact the first missive set down upon formal parchment was inscribed to his Grace, Eldir, High King of Havish.

The second note bore Mearn's own name in a script astonishingly erudite. He had never seen Maenol's written hand. By wary habit, the forestborn clans wrote no messages for fear such might fall into the hands of town enemies.

That Lord Maenol had seen fit to wield pen and ink bespoke des- peration and appalling finality. Mearn gripped the note, reluctant as stone. For an agonized instant, he wished himself far from this site in the marshes, that he not be the one left to carry whatever burden the sealed parchment was bound to contain.

Then, as if stung into branding impatience, he ripped the seal 354.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

open. Wax bits arced through the gloom like flung gravel. Tagged by the flickering, uncertain flame light, eyes stinging with humility, Meam read.

The first line requested his assistance to deliver an appeal to King Eldir. Tysan's caithdein would beg sanctuary in Havish for the refugee survivors who managed to win free of Alliance persecution against clanblood. The cost in pride, in pain, in the sheer magnitude of that understated defeat raised a knot of remorse in Mearn's chest. Scarcely seven years since the massive downfall at Vastmark, Prince Lysaer had succeeded in unseating a clan presence whose roots went back five thousand years. Words were inadequate to express grief and heartache, that without the trials of the Mistwaith's curse, these same clansmen should have sworn the same man their loyalty.

Now naught could be done but watch entropy march through the breach. The bottomless demands of trade and crown treasury held small care for the great mysteries. No means existed to soften the blow, that Arithon's loss of three brigs at Riverton might impact all future generations. A clan abdication of Tysan's free territory would leave townsmen free rein for desecration. Unwilling to admit such a weight of despair, Mearn stamped back bleak thoughts.

The boy watched his face, restrained into choked stillness that bespoke an unkindly awareness of consequences. The hovel's thick warmth and the fenwoman's welcome lent him no ease.

Mearn tucked the missive for King Eldir away, then fought for the presence to peruse the second request.

There, even Lord Maenol's steady hand faltered, the letters formed into jerked lines of reluctance as they charged s'Brydion by word of honor to admit the boy named Ianfar s'Gannley into Mearn's per- sonal household as a page.

'The boy is my uncle's son,' Maenol's words stated, torn by small gaps as though more than once the ink had dried on the quill nib. 'As of this moment, he stands as my heir. He will inherit should I pass the Wheel without leaving progeny. My scouts just brought word the Alliance forces are closing the east passes. I see no better way to ensure the boy's safe deliver- ance from Tysan's sovereign territory. I charge you, by your family Name, keep him safe. If my war captain in Camris survives me, the raising of Ianfar must fall to him. Should that one perish, seek fosterage with any forestborn family you see fit. Be sure he learns what he must to rule after me.'

Meam closed his fingers, crumpling the parchment with a burst of animal savagery. Too grim to weep, he used all his anger to resmooth the crushed leaf, which he then rearranged into razor-sharp folds and tipped into the spill of the rushlight. Smoke billowed black. The acrid 355.

JANNY WURTS.

reek of burned hide rode the air, and the fenwife shot upright, exclaiming.

One look at Mearn's face shocked her silent. Through the dirty orange flame that crawled up the charred missive, the brother of Duke BransJan s'Brydion met the paralyzed gaze of young Ianfar s'Gannley. "I accept both charges laid on me by your chieftain. Will you formally agree to my guardianship?"

The boy tucked his hands under his arms, too brave to show he was shivering. He knew well enough his consent entailed the unspeakable possibility that his clans might be driven to yield up their sovereign charge in Tysan. Almost, his heart seemed to fail him.

The underlit shadow thrown by his lashes made his eyes seem too large and too bright.

Then the stark, gritty fiber of his people shone through. "I bow to the will of my caithdein and the demands of necessity." His dignity far more in that moment than many men managed in a lifetime, he bowed. "In gratitude, s'Gannley gives thanks for the generosity of s'Brydion."

"This is not charity, boy," Mearn denounced, gruff. He tossed the last flaring embers to the floor, which was earth, and damp enough not to lend fuel to the sparks. "Under my roof, you'll have standing as a brother. Be sure, if my family has any resource to give, you won't end your days in foreign exile."

Had the child been younger, even by two years, a grown man could have extended his arm and gathered that awkward, stiff form into an embrace for comfort. But hardship had imposed too early a maturity. The boy stepped woodenly forward and offered his wrist for the clasp to seal a pact between adults.

Mearn blinked. He hoped the scalding blur to his sight was solely due to his fever. With his jaw clenched hard against any words that might unmask the pity that tore him, he pretended the wrists he accepted were not cold, or drawn taut with fear and uncertainty.

"Don't you mind, boy," he said in dry humor. "We're in poor state together. If I'm not mistaken, our first act must be to beg help from these fenlanders to thread a safe path through the mires. Then we might need to pilfer a post horse to make our way back to Avenor.

We'll need to go swiftly." One corner of his mouth crawled up in fierce irony as he remembered the gold and the compromised straits of his house servant, still embroiled in the ruse concerning several sly doxies. Their extended service to cover his absence by now must have seeded a staggering collection of wild rumors. "If I'm going to look peaked, it's all in good form. A man who's been worn to his bones by 356.

pright, ~ dirty .~er of Janfar u Will w he t the :1 up him.

~ too ~, to far he of the ~gh its tl't tn m a st FUGITIVE PRINCE.

three women over the course of a fortnight would be nothing else except prostrate. Do you bet?"

A tentative nod. The boy's fingers stopped trembling a fraction.

"That's good," Mearn assured, and lightened his touch. "We'll get along fine. I'll stand you five silvers for the bone buttons on your boot cuff that when my brother the duke learns about my randy reputa- tion, he'll send sealed word by fast courier. He'll say that my dallying is shameful, and for clan's sake, the time's come to marry."

By then, Lord Maenol's bitter note of appeal lay in immolated bits on the floor. The fenwife bustled over, indignant, and poured water over the ashes.

"! could have used that to drink, pretty mistress," Mearn said in reflexive protest. He released his steadying hold on the boy, grabbed the empty bucket, and tucked it into Ianfar's stilted grasp. "Go, man,"

he urged. "Refill this for the lady, and take as long as you like."

The release came no moment too soon. Run to the end of his flag- ging strength, Ianfar bolted outdoors to unburden his anguish in pri- vate.

Left to the breathless scolding of his benefactress, Mearn shut his eyes against branding pain and the flame of a burgeoning headache.

When the fenwife understood he was not going to argue, he managed a beautifully worded apology that sapped the very last of his reserves. Before the maw of oblivion claimed him, he made a vow with the unyielding endurance of black iron. Once back in Avenor, when Ianfar was delivered into absolute safety, he would seek out the name of the man who had betrayed Arithon's faith and precipitated the premature flight out of Riverton. For Lord Maenol's losses, and for the clans' forced abdication of their age-long stewardship of a kingdom, that one would suffer the harsh edge of s'Brydion justice until Dharkaron Avenger himself interceded to ask human mercy.

357.

Early Spring 5653 Three Moments In a tavern along the road south of Middlecross, a middle-aged min- strel clad in scarlet sits down and tunes his lyranthe for his night's round of performance; and his accustomed audience of tradesmen and farmhands is swelled by a half company of crown soldiers under command of another man, whose nondescript mantle covers the sun- wheel blazon of authority, and who hears through each ballad with mounting suspicion and a frown of incensed disapproval ....

A fortnight following Arithon's clean escape out of Riverton, his imprisoned accomplices are boarded into the holds of the three brigs newly commissioned; while the appointed royal captains call orders to make sail, Cattrick stands at the trestle in his loft, a sharpened shim of graphite clenched in his fist, and his heart lit with rage fit to murder...

On the same day, Mearn s'Brydion returns to Avenor, Ianfar s'Gannley alongside him; and the first gossip he hears as he hands off his blown livery horse is the word of Princess Talith's fatal plunge from a high tower battlement, named by the shocked and mourn'rag court as a suicide caused by despair....

358.

Spring 5653 X. Pursuit The three brigs newly commissioned under Lysaer's sunwheel banner raised anchor to a windward fide. Before the rip grew too stiff to ride for advantage, the pert little fleet raised stainless, fresh sails and began its mincing, piloted run down the estuary to ply open waters to Corith.

Confined in the narrow gloom of the male's cabin, and crammed head and feet in a hammock ill suited to the frame and muscle of a man given lifetime service as a war captain, Caolle listened to the ~xx~ s 'kx"~ of orders which maneuvered the flag vessel, Lance of Jus- tice, through her intricate, bending course down the narrows. Since his complaint that the fumes of fresh varnish turned his head, the door to his quarters was latched back and open. His ankles by then were already chained to forestall him trying escape. By the free air through the quarterdeck hatch grating, and the brackish miasma of the salt bogs, he mapped the layered headlands of a shoreline he could not see.

Moment to moment, Caolle rode his taxed senses. However his wound ached, he asked for no posset. Too easily, the reins of clear consciousness might slip his grasp and spin him back into circling delirium. The Koriani healer meant him well, but her remedies gave him sleep that brought nightmares,. and no peace of mind when he woke.

359.

Early Spring 5653 Three Moments In a tavern along the road south of Middlecross, a middle-aged m'm- strel clad in scarlet sits down and tunes his lyranthe for his night's round of performance; and his accustomed audience of tradesmen and farmhands is swelled by a half company of crown soldiers under command of another man, whose nondescript mantle covers the sun- wheel blazon of authority, and who hears through each ballad with mounting suspicion and a frown of incensed disapproval ....

A fortnight following Arithon's clean escape out of Riverton, his imprisoned accomplices are boarded into the holds of the three brigs newly commissioned; while the appointed royal captains call orders fo make sail, Cattrick stands at the trestle in his loft, a sharpened shim of graphite clenched in his fist, and his heart lit with rage fit to murder....

On the same day, Mearn s'Brydion retums to Avenor, Ianfar s'Gannley alongside him; and the first gossip he hears as he hands off his blown livery horse is the word of Princess Talith's fatal plunge from a high tower battlement, named by the shocked and mourning court as a suicide caused by despair....

358.

Spring 5653 X. Pursuit The three brigs newly commissioned under Lysaer's sunwheel banner raised anchor to a windward tide. Before the rip grew too stiff to ride for advantage, the pert little fleet raised stainless, fresh sails and began its mincing, piloted run down the estuary to ply open waters to Corith.

Confined in the narrow gloom of the mate's cabin, and crammed head and feet in a hammock ill suited to the frame and muscle of a man given lifetime service as a war captain, Caolle listened to the tense strings of orders which maneuvered the flag vessel, Lance of Jus- tice, through her intricate, bending course down the narrows. Since his complaint that the fumes of fresh varnish turned his head, the door to his quarters was latched back and open. His ankles by then were already chained to forestall him trying escape. By the free air through the quarterdeck hatch grating, and the brackish miasma of the salt bogs, he mapped the layered headlands of a shoreline he could not see.

Moment to moment, Caolle rode his taxed senses. However his wound ached, he asked for no posset. Too easily, the reins of clear consciousness might slip his grasp and spin him back into circling delirium. The Koriani healer meant him well, but her remedies gave him sleep that brought nightmares, .and no peace of mind when he woke.

359.

~ANNY WURT$.

Like a crippled, old dog, he felt he had outlived his usefulness.

enchantresses' meddling fed his unease, tick tight as they were wit Lysaer s'Ilessid's Alliance. Dread fanned that anxiety, that his part his liege Iord's flight out of Riverton might become their best tool t clinch Prince Arithon's downfall.

Now the brig was under way, ostensibly to reinforce the s'Ilessi assault on the outpost at the Isles of Min Pierens.

Caolle was not resigned. Discomfited by the roll of rough passaf as her crew worked ship in the tideway, he traded straight pain f~ awareness. The hammock swung and creaked from its rings as vessel slipped astream of the ebb. Canvas cracked overhead.

sails caught aback., a_n_d o~to~,'~irg-~.~ffthbs fii~sed as the quartermast~ spun t~~e helm hard alee to swing her stem down the channel. Ter~, orders volleyed through the rocking lag of the stay, as drift bore ff vessel past the sandy tongue of a spit. Then the shivering bang fro~ aloft as her yards braced full to the wind; new foam dashed off rudder. The brig regained way and sailed close-hauled down the nec of the Riverton Narrows.

Caolle's hammock rocked to the heel of the deck. He clamped h teeth and stifled the oaths that would draw unwanted attention. T?

straits of his captivity were worse than demeaning. The least cram in his limbs could not be eased without begging outside help. H weakness was not deemed a reliable jailer: the festered wounds on h forearms were poulticed, dressed wrist to elbow in bandages whic also served as restraint. Immobility left him more time than he coul use without fretting.

Abovedecks, the leadsman called off the mark. The captain barke for a two-point change in course.

"Smarten up on those braces? howled the mate to some laggard "Are ye blue-water hands, or a pack o' coast-hugging galleymen?"

The lookout sang out and the lead line confirmed shoaling wate Other crewmen stationed at the port cathead let go the ring painte The cockbilled anchor splashed to windward to a rattling fall of cabl.

While the bow was stayed through the tug of an eddy, Caolle pitche his forest-sharp senses to take fullest stock of his surroundings.

By now, he judged the ship's company included twenty-flY combat-trained guardsmen. Half of these sprawled idle, polishin mail, or shooting dice for small coin in the galley. Their less seawo2 thy fellows shared the rail on the main deck, unmercifully rouste hither and yon by rushed seamen as the brig wore again, and the side changed port to starboard. Two dozen more sailhands berthe forward as crew, each one vouchsafed by merchant references or 360.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

paper with a justiciar's seal to affirm lawful background from a city of lifelong residence.

Others on board, Caolle recalled from the Laughing Captain's tap- room. These included the brig's handpicked officers, a captain, two mates, a grizzled and temperamental quartermaster, and the serving- class appointments of cook, purser, and cabin steward. At large also was a street brat, caught stowing away, and pressed into crown ser- vice as ship's boy. His vociferous, guttersnipe insolence came and went through the companionway as he fetched and carried for the Koriani First Senior.

Since spells and scryings wrought through quartz-crystal reso- nance could not be made to span open salt water, Lirenda and the healer, brought along to tend Caolle, made passage on the same ves- sel. They shared the captain's quarters in the stem cabin, while the displaced officers occupied the chart room a scant breadth of a bulk- head away.

More orders sang out, and the brig hauled her wind; the changed quarter of the breeze wafted the smell of fish stew from the galley, mingled with soldier's oaths and the cook's nasal carping. By the bite of his temper and a doleful emphasis on assignment of unfair duties, Caolle learned that seventy-two of Arithon's accomplices, exposed by Koriani conjury languished, chained, in the brig's hold as well. By default, the two vessels trailing the flagship must bear the Etarran fighting companies imported to defeat the Shadow Master at Corith.

A war captain's instinct died hard, to know the strength and posi- tion of his enemies.

Caolle closed his eyes. From habit, he reconstructed the mate's cabin in detail from memory. On his right hand, a hanging locker leaked a tanner's tang of new oilskins; then a stand and basin, rowed with latched hooks holding buckets of drawn seawater and a mesh bag with lye soap for washing. To his left lay the mate's berth, and a small niche for an officer's sea chest, with a brass lantem mounted in imbals overhead, swinging unlit to the toss of the hull. Caolle gave no ground to discomfort. He quizzed his recall until he knew he could find his way without mishap, even in total darkness. Then he catnapped as he could, restive with distrust and the incessant throb of bound wounds.

For a while, the rush and slap of rip currents in the estuary kept time to his uneasy dreams. He drowsed and woke and drowsed again.

When sunset faded into silver-gray dusk, the vessel cleared the last shoals at the mouth of the inlet. The commotion as she raised topsails, 361.

~ANNY WURT$.

then the change to the long, swinging roll of fresh sea swell: ened Caolle back to full consciousness.

Flaring light jinked through a seam in the bulkhead as tl steward kindled the lantern in the chart room adjacent. A di,.

in progress resumed on the heels of his departure. Through t clump of the captain's seaboots, a woman's soprano raisec which burgeoned into rife argument. The captain's bitten a clashed into female rejoinder.

"We will not lay our course for the Isles of Min Pierens,"

contradicted, chill as new ice on a freshet. "That was sheer p tion on your part since, in fact, our quarry will not sai~ there ei The first mate's gruf bass backed his captain's disagt whelmed into thundering canvas as crewmen aloft shook reefs in the mainsail.

Then Koriani reply, in dictatorial steel. "No. By no means. ?

has the future been scried for full surety, but we have deli allowed Arithon s'Ffalenn to hear warning of Prince Lysaer's p clipped, sulky venom, the First Senior qualified. "The ShadoK knows an Alliance blockade will close over him if he sails tc We've foreseen his reaction. He'll flee south for Torwent. Sealed has already shown us the cove where he'll reclaim his sloop and His point of vulnerability lies in the estuary at the head of Maitre If our spellcraft restrains his shadows, your three ships plying th of the inlet can pin him down as he bolts for open water."

"That's a coast run," cracked the captain, tired and brittle ~ long, fussy hours of seamanship required to run the Rivert rows. "You'd have been better off to charter a galleyman w~ cargo through Tideport and Mainmere."

"You're afraid?" Lirenda's derisive accusation chilled C ugly foreboding. "I'm surprised. Three ships with armed co~ against a pleasure sloop crewed by one man and a bumb drunk would seem an auspicious engagement."

The captain's slow-strided pacing stopped short. "Do you for a fool? You speak of the shadow-bending sorcerer who ca~ trade fleet to burn at Minderl Bay."

"Against whom you've the backing of the Koriani Prim.

arch. Gainsay her will, and you also betray the Alliance of [ refusing your help to corner the Spinner of Darkness." Lirend debate with aristocratic dismissal. "Do fetch out your charts, Our course is a foregone conclusion. The trap which my orde: will be sprung, the fate of your enemy is already destined an, through multiple wards of grand augury."

362.

sharp- ~e cabin cussion ne staid a snag ~thority Lirenda esump- her."