Its cry of bright power sheared the air into recoil.

Undone by terror before blows could be struck, the sunwheel sol- dier fled. Behind the glass house, Dakar dropped prone as the untamed chord which had first Named the winter stars knifed through the ramshackle hamlet.

Seared blind by fierce light, struck deaf by a peon of resounding celebration, every man ranged against Arithon s'Ffalenn lost his will to attack. Thought faltered and stopped. Grand harmony grown too refined to endure held them rooted, until mortal spirit longed to escape the bounds of its own living flesh. Onlookers unmanned by sheer splendor broke down and wept for a rapture too mighty for rea- son to encompass, and for a beauty too sharp for the clay of earth- bound senses.

396.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

The enchantment built to a shattering crescendo. Reduced to shrill screams, Vorrice cowered on the dais. His less fortunate guards lost wits to flee as the land itself woke in reply. The ground shook to that spiraling resonance of celebration. Dust flew as the wild winds sprang aloft, to spin the arch of the sky into ecstasy. Caught in the breech, man's works became winnowed like so much chaff set to the flail.

The glass pigs whined into crystalline cracks. First one, then another of them sheared through and collapsed to a sleeting slide of white fragments. The crown's Lord Examiner toppled from skewed planks and landed, raked bloody and weeping. None heard his dis- tress. Any whose feelings had maligned Felirin became trapped in the well of raised force from the sword.

Deadwood burst new leaves. Forged metal heated in sympathetic vibration, until swords and armor racked apart into smashed links and tinseled shards. Within heartbeats, the prostrate, stupefied guard stood stripped to the shreds of their gambesons.

At the apex of power, charged head to foot by a wave of unbridled joy, Arithon s'Ffalenn cried aloud. Athera's titled Masterbard, sound was his element. Ceded a cresting tide of roused earthforce, he required no mage-sight to apply the fine dictates of his training.

Dakar thrust to his feet, prepared for the outcome. The Teir's'Ffalenn had accomplished much the same feat before, when an accident of song had unleashed the grand mysteries during a summer solstice in Jaelot.

Arithon raised his schooled voice. Merged with the harmonies fired by the sword, he sang the exacting resonance to wake steel. The bolts snapped in Felirin's fetters. Chain and shackles clanged free.

Limned in the glare of the Paravian guard spell Arithon kicked aside smoking bundles of faggots. Cinders whirled, sullen, in his wake as he reached the dazed singer and shouldered the man's failing weight.

"Run!" he implored.

In his hand, the sword passed through its crescendo. The sheeting flare off the runes bled from white to silver, then sank, sparkling into subliminal haze. While Arithon spun shadow to confuse their escape, Dakar reached his side, hands outthrust to stave off Felirin's collapse.

He said, urgent, "You don't have to walk far, we have horses."

Together, he and Arithon hauled the singer away from the charred bundles of faggots. Drunken flight carried them through the dazed guardsmen. They wove past the stacked saltwort, and ducked under the eaves of the craft shed, to explosions of fragmenting glassware as the sword's diminished vibration unleashed fresh destruction inside.

397.

J~N WUR~$.

To Arithon, in horrified admiration, Dakar gasped, "Ath preserve!

If you planned this, you know you've just handed Lysaer's Alliance all the fighting cause they need to raise the whole countryside a~ai~st yOU."

Running as though traced in a frozen strobe of lightning, Aritl~0n stung back in dry irony, "That's presupposing we manage to surx i~'e the next hour. Once that examiner and his guard find their x~'~ts, they'll be at our heels like fell vengeance."

398.

Spring 5653 Parchment and Seal Nine years into crowned rule, King Eldir of Havish still bore the weight of royal office like the encumbrance of effete finery draped on the shoulders of a laborer. His blunt nose, square face, and bluff man- ner were misleading. More than his high council and his guild minis- ters had been fooled into believing they could intrigue as they pleased, masked in deferent manners and false honesty. When the shrewdest of them all, the Lord Mayor of Westcliff, took a hard fall in his effort to thwart the disbanding of the headhunters' leagues, the king was barely eighteen, still fresh from his Fellowship coronation, and nicked with scabs from inept first acquaintance with a razor.

By the hour of his Grace's twenty-first birthday, those titled offi- cials left standing knew not to regard the Westcliff affray as a slip of poor luck or chance accident. By main strength and hard wits, his Grace of Havish had routed the most entrenched town policies from their bloodletting feud against clansmen.

At the age of twenty-six, the realm remained in firm hand, with the Second Age site at Telmandir crawling with stonemasons working to lift tumbled walls out of ruin. If Eldir still donned his state jewels with reluctant, stiff-shouldered forbearance, only those outside ambassadors who were deaf to advice misread his farmbred appear- ance. Even in private conference with a Sorcerer, his p~at brown eyes stayed disarmingly direct. His hands, square and blunt, rested at ease. Beneath them, the inked script of state parchments unfurled across the battered deal planks which served as his council-hall table.

399.

JANN WURT$.

"Choose your stance firmly," said Sethvir of Althain, perched opp0- site. His woodsprite's face peered out in concern from a wren's nest of tangled white hair. Shadowed by the gloom under soot-darkened ceiling vaults, he seemed a bundle of discarded maroon velvet, crossed legs tucked up like a child's in the ostentatious gilt chair Eldir kept at hand to mollify disputing merchants. His inquisitive fingers traced the earthenware mug nestled askew in his lap as he added, pity the need that makes this step necessary, and I warn, what peace you buy will be temporary."

Without visible emotion, the king snapped his fingers to his tary, then accepted the waiting, dipped quill. He jagged the loops of his signature as if the act by itself framed defiance. in tr~~th~ no foot'rag for compromise existed. The ban on slave labor ~~',~ a point of charter law, held in faith by the Fellowship Sorcerers'

compact with the Pararians.

"Since I don't plan to abdicate, pity has no place." Eldir's regard rested back on Sethvir. "I won't have my edict against defied. Nor will I see my harbormasters tempted with bribe~ beguile them to treason, or bend them to the whim of Tysan's politics for the sake of a shipping guild's profits." The king's eye- brows knitted in distasteful memory of the death sentence enacted against three high-ranking offenders. "My relations witl~ Prince Lysaer are already strained over principle. Well then, my port magistrates need waste no more trials collaring the scoundrels meddle in the breech."

If Prince Lysaer's guilds pursued trade with the cities of H;~,.

they would ply the king's coast in galleys rowed by free crews.

The pen was passed back. The efficient, mousy secretary had ~,~ already heated, Havish's great seal and scarlet ribbons prepared tro~ long habit as the royal fingers snapped again.

Eldir impressed the realm's blazon, the formality of his words odds with his gesture as he skated the parchment across the wor~'

trestle to Sethvir. "As King of Havish, sanction is asked with sealed intent. This day I request Fellowship assistance to enforce realm's charter, bound to me by oath from my line's founding ance~.

for, Bwin Evoc s'Lornmein."

"By your leave." The Sorcerer traced an apparently negligent fin- ger over the wafer of warmed wax. His gaze stayed fixed on the othe~ hand, aimlessly rolling his mug to and fro, while his drifty regar~~ seemed absorbed by the shifting, whorled patterns sluiced throug)~ the grounds by the dregs.

King Eldir knew better. Moment to moment, immersed in the 400.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

world's multiplicity of events, Sethvir tracked the life threads of men, and sparrows, and flies. On that one second's effortless thought, his consciousness unriddled a chain of disturbance that whipped the s0uthcoast of Korias to a burst of unseasonal activity.

His far-flung awareness sensed three riders in flight, two of them unwell; and a storm brewing; and the shouts of post riders dis- patched at speed to raise Alliance guardsmen from Middlecross. In the immediate quiet of the king's patient presence, magecraft bloomed under the Sorcerer's touch. A star of etched light flared over the fresh wax. Deft, precise, Sethvir traced a circle of glyphs. Spells stitched the air like the indelible glitter of foil ribbon. When he lifted his hand, the cipher remained, a fiery imprint cast across the royal blazon to seal promise of a Fellowship binding.

"Post fair warning," he murmured, while untold miles to the north, a gray palfrey stumbled and her rider whimpered in pain.

Speech maintained his divided train of thought. "In thirty days' time, Traithe will travel your coastline to raise an enchained spell of prox- imity. When his work stands complete, any galley to raise sight of Havish's shores will have no fettered oarsmen, on peril of Fellowship intervention. Every man set in manacles or kept under duress will have his steel struck by cold sorcery. Slave convicts go free, with their captains and crews to be held at the mercy of crown justice."

"And the ships?" the King asked. "They'll remain tagged with banespells?"

Sethvir shifted, his half-lidded gaze rinsed the lucent turquoise of a sky-caught imprint in a rain puddle. His distracted reply whispered echoes across the lofty expanse of the hall. "Impound them. Or set them afire as you please, though they'll float without hindrance for a paid crew."

Outdoors, the sun emerged from a cloud. Barred light streamed through the west bank of lancet windows, hazed with airborne dust.

The sliced edge of the mote crossed the Sorcerer's bent knee. Against the lit flare of wine-colored velvet, his hand clamped into a fist.

"Trouble?" asked King Eldir.

"Not yet." Seconds passed, while the secretary fidgeted and Sethvir's pixie features retreated into the semblance of doddering blankness.

A dutiful page boy poised by the doors rushed a step to rescue the tea mug, in danger of upset amid the folds of the Warden's robe.

The king's quelling gesture deflected the kindness. "Let be, lad."

A minute trickled by, elusive as the fall of sand grains sieved through an hourglass. Then Sethvir blinked, stirred, and linked 401.

]ANNY WURTS.

crooked knuckles through the rumpled fall of his cuffs. He flashed a conspirator's wink to the page and rescued the canted mug himself.

"A trip to the kitchen would not be amiss. Could you bring back a fresh pot of tea?"

His pert smile saw the boy off on his errand, yet the glance he bestowed back on King Eldir stayed as lapsed into distance as a fog- bank. "Merciful maker," he grumbled. "If I'm overtaxed by any one thing, it's intransigent princes who run amok without the saving bad grace of planting even one bastard on a tavern wench. When you marry next week, grant our Fellowship a boon. Breed up a clutch of royal heirs."

A cough as rich as aged oak escaped Eldir's sturdy palm. "Dare I guess?" Orfiy one other ch'fidless scion in/Mh~ ,~so~e,,~a~gbis,o family line. "Is Arithon being difficult again?"

Sethvir raised miffed eyebrows. "That sort of indulgence would be blessed relief where the Teir's'Ffalenn is concerned, well you know as much."

King Eldir curled his knuckles against his lips to nip his impolitic laughter. One disruptive visit to his court had been enough; Rathain's prince had countered Tysan's public campaign of eradication through a volatile mix of unlawful conniving and a devilish bent for playing unconscionable stakes. No matter that Havish stayed neutral through the feud sown by Desh-thiere's curse. All spring, the dockside at Ostermere had seethed with bold talk concerning the rigged ships disappeared from their Riverton launchings. If rumor held truth, the marauding crews included disaffected clansmen from Tysan.

Since no mind might fathom the full scope of Arithon's design, the King of Havish asked outright, "What's Rathain's prince done this time?"

Sethvir blinked. "Raised a hue and cry that has every crown- commissioned guard in south Korias lathering good horses to kill him." He scowled into space, while the reflexive span of his conscious- ness mapped the speed and direction of more than one far-distant set of hoofbeats. Then his branching thoughts riffled like cards through a player's deck, testing the probable offshoots of consequence.

Amid myriad moments of unformed possibility, one stood forth, a diamond-clear crossroads of movement and intent pared to the fixed edge of destiny: in three days' time, guardsmen under a Hanshire captain named Sulfin Evend would close upon the three fugitives. The spells of illu- sion and misdirection the Mad Prophet spun to evade them would fail, because in the past, their commander had studied with the boy wards of the Koriathain. He understood very clearly how spellcraft could upset the hierar- 402.

chy of politicai to confront the The King c Althain's ~ wind array ~ would come to Under the ligh~ cast the constr~ Fellowship, tim Sethvir shil him catalog as a ~e~ows complete res, allow the had won haunted; s bitter to er By the direct forc destiny.

The aur pain of pa placent. C Seven to, cause. Th quences. } thiere's cu same choi, By the ~ the Paravi assistance must be "Your te Sethvir 1 mug from !

he was, an, Throu cerer appeals.

: ca//, ished a imself.

back a :~ce he a fog- gy one g bad 't you tch of )are I ~f his ld be w as ~litic ~in's ugh ting ~gh ~ at ips ~he he FUGITIVE PRINCE.

chy of political power. The grown man had sworn his sword to the Alliance to confront the source of that fear.

The King of Havish said something.

Althain's Warden replied, his m'md still enmeshed with the whirl- wind array of unborn happenstance: when Dakar the Mad Prophet would come to scribe a distress rune in blood upon the surface of a stone.

Under the light of a chilly, gray dawn, he would dry the figure inflame, then cast the construct into a streamlet. At the hour his appeal for help reached the Fellowship, time would be too short to act.

Sethvir shifted the arc of his thoughts. A fraction of an instant let him catalog what resource he might call to hand. Though his powers as a Fellowship Sorcerer were overwhelm~mgly sufficient to effect complete rescue then and there, he would not, must not, do other than allow the threatened parties to act to save themselves. The reprieve he had won from a past outside of Athera's historical record still haunted; still seared his waking awareness. A stock of experience too bitter to endure had stamped its mark of immutable truth.

By the Law of the Major Balance, his Fellowship could not use direct force to intervene without unseating the course of the world's destiny.

The audience with King Eldir suffered a small lapse as the grievous pain of past losses weighed on the Sorcerer's heart. He was not com- placent. Once, before drake-dream had snatched the Fellowship of Seven to Athera, he and his colleagues had enacted their will for a cause. They had paid for their meddling with appalling conse- quences. He could not but ache before the chill wisdom that for Desh- thiere's curse, his Fellowship must resist the temptation to relive the same choices again.

By the compact's clear terms, their powers were sworn to preserve the Paravian mysteries; mankind might accept steering counsel and assistance on request, but the ultimate course of humanity's survival must be shaped through self-will and free choice. "Your tea has arrived," King Eldir prompted.

Sethvir looked up, found a smile for the page, then exhumed his mug from the folds of his robe and set it upright on the table. Worn as he was, and tested by conscience, his gnarled grip held no palsy.

Through the interval while a royal servant refreshed his cup, the Sor- cerer unreeled his considered response in the form of three direct appeals.

A call arrowed out to touch Asandir, just ridden the breadth of tysan to test the new patterns of prejudice fanned by Lysaer's cam- paign to repress mage talent.

A second tracer flagged down Kharadmon, on watch amid grand ward against a cold backdrop of stars; and tied in a the brewing spring storm in Athera's arctic latitudes.

A third touch raised the awareness of a patriarch tree, and twice seared by lightning, and exchanged a pact of permission.

One last vectored inquiry mapped cause and effect, and their impact on the future. Sethvir foresaw no trend of understanding arise out of Arithon's brash rescue of Felirin. The~ mer would bring on more trials, more burnings, more recruits led to enlist by unsettled fears and strained politics. The spi- raling trend of Prince Lysaer's maligned belief would gain heated impetus, fresh spark to the trend which drew men to embrace the cause of the Alliance of Light.

Misunderstanding of a sword's gifted powers served only to ignite a new wave of fear. The price of Fellowship assistance as always touched off wider ramifications.

Sethvir sought prosaic comfort from his mug of scalding tea. When he raised his tormented ~aze to EldJr. he offered his sorrowful for~ cast, "Very soon you will be pressured to take sides on the issue of practicing sorcery. The mage talented will come seeking refuge within your borders before the advent of summer solstice."

"There's no decision to be made," Eldir said, his strong hands reaching to gather up the spelled parchment. "Tysan's burnings are unjust. The condemned are not criminals." For the scion of a line renowned for mild pragmatism, he finished in vehement force. "My crown is a mockery if Havish can't provide them with sanctuary.

We've already spoken for the refugees who flee Tysan's persecution of the clanborn."

Sethvir touched his crabbed fingertips against his closed eyelids.

Shadowed by the finials of the massive gilt chair, he could have been mistaken for an arthritic grandfather, mantied in velvets too volumi- nous for their framework of brittle, aged bones. His voice was sub- dued as he tendered the only bright truth he could offer. "Your Grace, because of your mercy, more than one irreplaceable clan bloodline will be saved. That could be the one act to salvage the balance on the hour when the Paravians choose to return."

The spin of the Fatemaster's Wheel meantime would scarcely stop for a platitude. The Sorcerer diffused his attention back into frag- mented awareness; while far off to the north, amid the hummocked land- scape of Mainmere's ruined keeps, Asandir drew rein, wheeled his stallion, and sent it thundering back down the road he had just traversed through Caithwood. Elsewhere, a storm gained intensity; a battered tree consented to 404.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

the hour of its death; and the Hanshire captain named Sulfin Evend clattered into a Middlecross posthouse, shouting for provisions and remounts with a ~! zeal the laziest horseboy must attend.

Beyond these small happenings, hazed into momentous event with the passage of years; snicked warp through weft with the turn of sea- sons, and the fall of changed leaves, and the byplay of iyats, Sethvir saw sunwheel priests raise vast armies, to carpet the summer land- scape. Rank upon rank crossed the Lanshire border to bring Lysaer's cause by fire and by sword into the Kingdom of Havish.

Unwilling to dwell uFo~ the so~o~,s Des~-t~ere's curse might inflict on the future, he immersed himself in particulars. "Please extend to your bride my Fellowship's profound regret," he said. "Due to an unforeseen difficulty, Asandir will be late for your wedding."

"No matter." King Eldir arose, staid as plain granite against the stitched silk of a tapestry. He thrust the rolled parchment under his arm and returned his rare, even smile. "We won't see hurt feelings.

Every city mayor and guild minister your colleague shamed into compliance for my coronation will more likely be silly with relief.

They've complained in the past that Asandir's scrutiny just makes them sweat rings through their expensive brocades."

But Sethvir sensed how the lightness was forced. He and Havish's king matched an agonized glance of understanding.

Then Althain's Warden clasped the royal wrist. "Trust your heart, your Grace. Your decisions today have been fitting and right."

No longer did the Sorcerer seem aged, or careworn unto fragility.

His myopic air of fuddled inattention could not mask what he was: a spirit annealed to unassailable strength through a past few others would survive. He owned the endurance to brave trials yet to come, and King Eldir s'Lornmein was too wise to stay blind to consequence: the impact of the day's event would not happen in his reign, but must fall like a blow upon the shoulders of his unborn descendants.