]ANNY WURTS.

run, as man and beast might to celebrate life as frost loosed its]

on black earth.

He carved further inland, his horse settled to a trot, thrc deeper thickets and trackless mires, beyond range of Lysaer's r foresters. His hounds coursed ahead. If their quarry was not al~ a swift-running deer, their master scarcely cared. The hound co badgered any game they could flush. Wild lynx, or red fox, no t to their training, they were left to track as they pleased, and.

whipped off the scent if their hunt veered them northwar~ south.

Due east, Mearn was bound, his brother's ducal blazon now r tied beneath the drab folds of his cloak.

By noon, under pallid gold sunlight, he reached a bare hillock,: tered with wind-stripped, buff grass. He drew rein there, mounted, loosened his girth. His stag hounds flopped, pantinI snap at the tickle of dried seed heads as though they were both by flies. The bitch whined. The horse shook its mane and rubbe sweated headstall against Mearn's leather-clad hip.

He shoved back the gelding's nose with a gently spoken epithe trace of roguish pleasure erased from his taut, narrow features.

year and events had changed him. His quick mind and observan!

were bent now toward other pursuits than tumbling loose ladies gambling. The breath of the breeze fanned a chill on his neck.

lovelock he had worn since his first growth of beard shorn off in purpose since Vastmark.

A dove called, mournful, from a thicket.

Mearn swung about at the sound, raised the corner of his c]

and unveiled the ducal blazon. Then he found himself a dry, flat in a cranny, and sat out of the wind while his horse grazed.

A slow interval passed, with Mearn touched to prickles by the tain awareness that he was being watched from all angles. Then, no ceremony, a young man moved upslope to meet him.

approach scarcely woke any sound from dry grasses. He ~ undyed leathers and a vest with dark lacing. He carried bow, k and sword as if weapons were natural as flesh. Large framed, del ate, he had a step like a wary king stag's. His light eyes, never swept the hillock behind, then Mearn, and measured him down t.

boot soles. On that day, the high chieftain of Tysan's outlawed c]

men was nineteen, one year shy as the old law still reckoned r hood.

"Lord Maenol, Teir s'Gannley, caithdein of Tysan," Mearn gre~ He arose, inclined his head in respect, and shared grief for the gr.

36.

ts hold t, all

One.

eye and the :old er- i ith [ tis ~re re, ]'F-.

11,.

is S-.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

son, whose titles and inheritance now burdened his young shoulders through Lysaer's murder of his predecessor.

Unlike the deceased Lady Maenalle, the heir returned neither wel- come nor greeting. He stood, chin tilted, silent, while the gusts flicked the laces on his clothing.

No whir less stubborn, Mearn met that challenge with a sheared, bright-edged smile. If the s'Brydion ancestral stronghold had with- stood the wars of the uprising; if his family owed fealty to another kingdom and another chieftain on the farthest shore of the continent, the ways of charter law and the old codes of honor were still held in common with Tysan's clans in Tysan. Shared trust ran deep beyond words.

"You have taken an unmentionable risk to come here," the boy said at last in his startling, mellow baritone.

"I bear unmentionable tidings," Mearn countered. "And a packet, bound for Arithon, sewn in the lining of my saddlecloth. I went through Sithaer itself to keep that from the handling of Lysaer's overzealous pack of grooms." He added, "You'll want to read the contents before you send them on. Your clans are the ones most threatened."

Tysan's young caithdein took that ominous statement in stride; such troubles were scarcely new. His own parents had fallen to head- hunters. "It's risky to be sending late dispatches across," he pointed out, vexed more for the snags in the timing. "Arithon plans to sail as soon as the weather settles."

Small need to dwell on the risk of disaster, if their covert crossings to his island haven at Corith were sighted. The fair, warming weather would see the first trade galleys nosing their way from snug harbors, the earliest at sea always manned by the keenest, most vigilant cap- tains.

"I leave that decision in your hands, then." Mearn strode to his grazing horse, removed girth and saddle, and sat down with the redolent, damp horsecloth. He used his knife to pick out the hem stitching. The packet inside was wrapped in cerecloth, by its weight and thickness no less than purloined copies of state documents.

"Oh, well-done," murmured Maenol. Still standing, stiff backed, against a sky that now threatened fine drizzle, he nipped through the twine ties with his teeth, then flipped through the pressed, folded parchments. The dark arch of his eyebrows turned grim as he read.

Documents recording rightful claim to clan prisoners to be bound over into slavery; documents of arraignment without trial for acts t)f dark sorcery, attested and signed, which named Prince Arithon criminal

37.

J^~ W~$.

and renegade. Maenol's sharp features, never animated, stilled to p quartz as he perused the signatures and seals.

"Merciful Ath," the words torn through his reserve as if jerked the barbed bite of steel. "Is there no end? How can so many may~ bind these acts into law, upon no proof or surety beyond Lysae spoken word? It's not canny!"

"It's happened," Mearn said. "I've seen. Lysaer has a tongue li pure honey. Fiends plague, my own family once fell for his trump~ up cause before we discovered any better. I'll need a courier sent warn my brother Bransian."

Maenol looked up. "That you'll have." He paused, squared fing~ gripping the first lists and requisitions appointed for the plann royal shipyard; for the galleys where his people might come to su~ at the oar, under the whip and in chains. He took a moment, seem to gather himself, then asked, "Is this truth, the accusation Lys~ s'Ilessid has laid against Prince Arithon at the Havens?"

Mearn looked back, intent, his mouth turned glass hard. "I dol know." He could not stay seated, but pushed to his feet, pressured vent his raw nerves. "But there's one proven fact every charge sot has omitted. Arithon lost his mage powers years ago, in defense of 1 own by the river Tal Quorin. If the slaughter at the Havens was col mitted to enable an act of dark sorcery, his hand could not shape t spells."

"The deaths could be his," Maenol said, blunt. "He could ha used an accomplice."

Mearn stopped. As his gaze bore into the younger man, relex lessly direct, Tysan's caithdein raised his chin and would neither bel nor stand down. "I'm this realm's steward, in the absence of its kin~ must ask, since our fate's been entangled with Arithon's. As a ma whose talents were blinded and broken, who knows to what lengt desperation might drive him to wrest back his gift for grand cc jury?"

"You never met him," Mearn said, implacable.

"Once." Maenol all of a sudden seemed heartsore. He star~ toward the wood where a pheasant pair called, while the bree framed the unrestrained joy of a lark. "I was eleven. Arithon seem~ retiring, unimportant at the time. All my devotion was for our f~ s'Ilessid prince, just arrived. I couldn't imagine he'd betray us."

Mearn at last looked away, his sigh a soundless exhalatic "Arithon's nothing like his half brother. Trust me in this. As for ~ guilt, there's no guessing, given the nature of the man. He's det~ mined, and beyond any doubt, the most dangerous creature my fa~

38.

tuned suffer emed ysaer :ton't ed to O far ~f his ' the FUGITIVE PRINCE.

ily has ever chanced to cross." Attuned to his master's distress, one of the brindle hounds roused and whined; the horse stamped, and douds lowered, dimming the earth beneath their soft-footed shroud- ing. The sky threatened torrents before nightfall.

"This much I can say," Mearn added finally, his arms folded as if the chill of the wetting to come later bit through his leathers before- time. "I have never yet known Arithon to lie. He received the Fellow- ship's sanction as Crown Prince. Since his oathswearing to Rathain, his integrity has been tested, once in life trial by the caithdein of $hand, and again, by my blood family. His morals were not found wanting. No act he undertook had been done without reason. Before I dared judge on those deaths at the Havens, I would ask in his pres- ence to hear out his sworn explanation."

The breeze hissed through the grasses, rich with the bearing promise of thawed soil.

"Well," Maenol shrugged in that steely light fatalism better suited to a man years older, "the tangle won't be yours or mine to unravel, but Earl Jieret's, as Rathain's sworn caithdein. If a boat can be sent, your dispatches will go across. Given luck, Arithon can be reached before he sails. Rest assured, my runner to your kin in Melhalla will leave my camp before nightfall."

"One last thing," Mearn said as he offered his forearms for a formal clasp in parting. "Lysaer has set scholars to work. They'll comb the old archives until they've recovered the past arts of navigation."

"So Arithon expected," said Maenol. The practice of star sights, disused and forgotten through the centuries while Desh-thiere's mists had smothered Athera's skies, could not stay lost for much longer.

For each day his Khetienn delayed her departure, the risk of discovery increased. Ancient charts might be found, or a rutter, to recall the location of the offshore Isles of Min Pierens. Arithon held neither the resources nor the men to repel an assault from the tumbledown fortress at Corith.

To be caught there would drive him to flight.

Aware like cold death that time was Lysaer's ally, the two clans- men went separate ways. In birdsong, the day waned, while the gen- tle rain fell and pattered chill tears through the dark, blurred brakes of the oak forest.

39.

Spring-Summer 5648 Three Warnings The day after Meam's duplicitous stag hunt, couriers bearing same copied dispatches ride outbound from Avenor, their horse tral pings emblazoned with the sunwheel on gold, new device of t~ Prince of the Light; and they pass another messenger inbound fro the south, who delivers King Eldir's ultimatum, that slave-beari galleys henceforward shall be barred from all ports in his Kingdom Havish ....

While dawn mists mantle the oak forests of Avenor, a black arr~ screams over the ci walls, shot from a clan messen er's bowstrin ty g g affixed to its shaft, sealed in Maenol s'Gannley's blood, a letter pro nounces a forfeit of life against the s'Ilessid pretender who has darec break the freedom of the first kingdom charter....

Far eastward, in the greenwood of yet another kingdom, the cl~ blood chieftain named Earl of the North cries out in torment from h~ dreams; and the warning delivered by his gift of Sight shows a packe~ city square with a scaffold, cordoned about with white banners and~ dazzle of sunwheel blazons, and chained there for the blade of a lic execution is his sworn liege, the Prince of Rathain ....

4O.

Spring-Summer 5648 the ~!~ trap- the ~rorn aring )m 0~ rrow ring; p ro- ared Ilan- L his ked ~d a.

II. Fugitive Prince.

The prophetic dream broke on a scream of sheer rage, torn from the throat of a doomed prince.

A second, real cry became its live echo, wrung in drawn agony from the caithdein sworn to life service of liege and realm.

Jieret, Teir's'Valerient, and Earl of the North snapped awake in Rathain with the vision's cruel vista seared into indelible memory.

Unmindful of peace, deaf to the birdsong which layered the spring dawn in the woodland outside his lodge tent, he eased himself free of his wife's tangled limbs and arose from the blankets to stand shiver- ing. Unsettled, naked, he sucked down breath after breath of chill air.

The close, familiar smells of tanned deer hide and oiled steel, and the pitchy bite of cut balsam failed to restore him to balance. "Ath keep our sons!" he gasped through locked teeth.

He could not shed his Sight of the last s'Ffalenn prince, crumpled and still in the swift, welling spurt of his life's blood.

"Another augury?" The bedding rustled. A lavish fall of hair stroked his back, then a cheek, laid against his taut shoulder; his wife, arisen behind him, to link calming hands at his waist.

His tension would tell her the portent was ugly. Too often, in sleep, the prescient vision he inherited from his father warned him of death and trouble.

Jieret raked long fingers through his ginger beard. He braced his

41.

JANNY WURTS.

nerve, spun, and enfolded his lady into his possessive embrace.

sorry, dove." The soft, misted peace of the greenwood seemed denly, desperately precious. "I shall have to travel very far, very The life of our prince is at stake."