Outside, Dakar battened down the heavy wool cloak, then sealed the last gap with one of Felirin's belied shirts.

Limned in the vermilion glow from the stones, Traithe poured the water into the pit. Steam shrieked and exploded, whirling the air into a scalding, opaque curtain. Jieret shut his eyes, dizzied, and momen- tarily confused by what seemed like voices, embedded between the meshed cry of four elements, wedded amid the primordial darkness and circling his frame in a chiaroscuro dance of wild energy.

u "Don't mind if they speak." Rendered formless in shadow, Traithe knelt and sprinkled a handful of crushed herbs, which showered bright sparks and infused fragrant smoke through the darkness.

"They are spirits born of fire, earth, water, and air, and they arise to help call your prince back to himself."

Jieret began a deep breath, then stopped short as the scalding steam burned into his nose and scoured the back of his throat. He realized by the fact that his forearm was cramping that his fingers had fastened a death grip in Arithon's hair. "You're saying the earth knows how important he is?"

Traithe sat, the hide with its reservoir of drawn water cradled between his tucked feet. He had removed his boots. By the pulsing, carnelian glow of the stones, the sole of the right one showed a puck- ered mass of scarred tissue, drawn like the mark of an old burn.

"Athera knows all of our names," he admitted, thoughtful and pleased for the rarity of indulging in philosophical discussion. "No one person's ranked ahead of another. In Prince Arithon's case, the elements plead aloud for the sake of the service he may yet be asked to perform."

"Service!" Irritable as sweat trickled and stung through a brush burn acquired from his hurried, rough ride, Jieret gave vent to deep bitterness. "It was unstinting service that exposed my liege to unrea- 484.

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sonable peril in the first place. The needs of this land are what kill him by slow inches. He would not be undone by a poisoned con- science had he not been asked to face troubles a sorcerer would be hard-pressed to handle!"

"He is mage-trained," Traithe reminded.

But Earl Jieret was not mollified. Though he faced no enemy, he felt unreasonably impelled to birth his wedged hurt into the concealing darkness. "A hundred stout liegemen would not be enough to man- age the burden he carries!"

"You're right, of course." Still mild, the Sorcerer splashed a cupped handful of water into the pit. Again, the steam swirled, dark- patterned tarnish on shadow. Beyond that blank veil, his words came disembodied. "Duty won't be what calls Arithon back."

"What else does he have?" Once started, Jieret found his restraint had slipped reason. The moist heat made him careless, and the slack weight of his prince made pity a dull blade that sheared off every civ- ilized platitude. "Or will you release him to follow his preference for music?"

Traithe responded to the first question only, his cragged face and pale hair wreathed in sweet smoke from the herbs. "He has his friend, who is living and with him. That matters far more than anything."

"Your logic is flawed." Shaking and savage, Jieret failed to note that the lean, hollowed cheekbone pillowed on his thigh showed the faintest, thin flush of rose. "What can his friends do other than die for him?"

"They can live for him," Traithe said, acerbic at last. "Do you think Caolle would change his fated end if he could?"

"Ath, no!" Earl Jieret's surprise burst through as a breath of free air.

"He died as he lived, for love of his prince. I've heard the details. He could have stopped fighting and chosen a less painful passage. As I knew him since infancy, I'd swear this for truth: however much he claimed that his duty came first, in fact, he gave out of personal loyal- ties."

Traithe's correction came gentle. "And are you so different?"

The scald of the steam choked Jieret's instinctive denial. He snorted, coughed, then let grief tear asunder to release as a leveling of soft laughter. "No," he admitted. "My days would lack savor without the deep caring to give the bad moments their meaning. This prince holds my true heart." Eyes shut while Traithe sprinkled the rocks yet again, and the heat rolled in waves to strip the last pall from restraint, Jieret lapsed into reminiscence. "I think that's been so since my boy- hood, on the night when I trailed his Grace into the forest. He'd just 485.

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sworn his royal oath as crown prince, and was savage with misery for it. Did you know that I eavesdropped on his tienelle scrying? He never lost patience. Nor would he admit that my prank cost him agony, though he had to have seen. I was just a fool boy come with mean intent to belittle him."

"As well you should have," a rusted voice interjected. Scarcely audible through the coiling hiss of the steam, and by far less fluid than the wraith language used by the elements, the limping speech stumbled on. "Certainly then, I was a prince seeking to escape the burden of my people's hopes. In hard fact, nothing's changed."

"Arithon?" Jieret jolted straight, his hungry eyes struggling to pierce veiling murk. When vision fell short, he resorted to touch. Bat- tened about in whorled darkness and moisture, the cold ,flesh of his prince was now heated, and streaming thick sweat. Yet the hand Jieret fumbled and grasped was still limp.

Then a flare from the stones as the steam eddied; Jieret saw the green eyes were opened, and wide, reawakened to a pain-filled awareness that violated privacy to witness.

Elation wrenched through him, then brought sharp remorse for straight guilt. His joy of recognition could not be denied, even in the face of such suffering. Helpless, Jieret could not even look away. "My liege, I have no words at all."

"Words are not necessary." Sweat or tears threaded down the hol- lows at Arithon's temples. The slicked whorls of black hair were dripping. "Your love calls too strongly, and mine, it would seem, is destined always to answer."

A break like cut glass in the suffocating womb of close shadow.

"Don't apologize. I'm the one who owes restitution. That was an ugly reward I gave Caolle."

Jieret yanked breath to protest, caught short just in time by Traithe's quelling gesture and silent, mouthed words, "No! Let him rant!"

"You should know, he died true to himself." Arithon's flesh spasmed through a violent shiver. His grainy, scraped voice bore no'

semblance of the grace gifted to him through bardic tradition as he labored through his distressed confession. "His courage and his loy- alty were of priceless coinage. I could live my whole life without fault from this moment, and still fall short of repayment. Nothing is left for you, Jieret. My hands are more empty than a beggar's. I have nothing to give back but the bankrupt husk of my sorrow."

"Your hands are not empty," Jieret forced out past the rock-hard wedge in his throat. "They hold a masterbard's talents, and more, the 486.

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living promise of crowned sovereignty for a whole people. If you never sit on the throne at Ithamon, you can still keep that trust through your progeny."

Which words pierced twofold, for the fact of a burden unwanted, and for the ruin Desh-thiere's curse had ripped through an oathsworn integrity. Arithon shook with the force of those sorrows, then turned his face, helpless as his agonized shame unmanned him.

Jieret's hands held steady and strong, unwilling to relinquish a tor- mented spirit to the throes of a solitary grief. Without prompting, this time, he found the wisdom to let the torrent unleash. "You're not alone, ever, despite your belief we would do better outside your com- pany. The Mistwraith's hold is a wound we all carry. Some of us bleed for it. Others give their lives. Those who survive receive the priceless gift of your sacrifice, and the ones closest keep faith and friendship as ~e may."

But no words could succor the pain that escaped in riven bursts.

Arithon's stripped body curled under the force of an anguish his dwindled strength could not deny. Jieret's arms gripped him, circling his wretchedness with unconditional compassion. "Brother, we are one. My sword does the killing, no less than yours. I can offer forgive- ness for trials no man could pass without scathe. You and Rathain's people are one mind and one heart. Never see yourself as separate, no matter how far the curse madness drives you. If you bear the insanity, let us be the unity that draws you back and receives you. Won't you see there's no blame? Caolle's content. He knew, as I do, that ours is the easier portion to bear!"

"You could die for those words," Arithon gasped. His splayed hands pressed into the sides of his face, as if physical pressure could somehow contain his coil of untenable torment.

Jieret stroked back coal hair, fingers callused from handling weapons infused with near reverent gentleness. "We all pass the Wheel. When I do, I'll know peace, no matter the cause. Believe this, my sons and my daughters will be there to steady your next steps in my place."

"For what price?" snapped Arithon, the wounded edge of his sar- casm striking in savage rebuttal. "Your shackles are wearing! For Dharkaron's punishment, how many times must I sing a lament over Steiven s'Valerient's grave cairn?"

Earl Jieret fought back, planted granite rejecting the thrust of fine steel. "For as long as it takes to defeat Desh-thiere and seat a crowned king at Ithamon."

"Is that so?" Arithon resorted to premeditated viciousness. "Then 487.

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how many times must Lady Dania's descendants suffer rapine and slaughter under the swords of sunwheel fanatics?"

Jieret flinched. That dart pierced and struck as no other could, the family he had lost to the horrors of Tal Quorin still coiled in memory and the black nightmares that ravaged the peace from his sleep. Yet Caolle had trained him.

He clung, dogged, his mind pitched to grasp for advantage. From the shocked reverberation of his own pain, he could gain the measure of Arithon's: a thousandfold worse, to have used such a personal weapon to strike with intent to wound. And there lay the vulnerabil- ity and the weakness at once. This was not attack, but defense of a vile and desperate proportion.

"You have a vicious tongue when you're bleeding," Jieret man- aged. His voice shook. He steadied it, determined, and smashed past the barrier of empathy that could have, would have stopped him short, if his care had existed only for an ironbound duty to a kingdom.

"Makes it harder than plague to bind up your wounds. Even so, Steiven loved you."

"He's bones in cold earth, as you will be," Arithon slashed back.

Had he one bodily resource to break Jieret's hold, he would have risen and fled elsewhere. Trapped helpless, he could only use words for his weapons, and no shield to spare his naked awareness from the lacerating impacts of remembrance. Left unsaid, all the unassuaged hurt of his severance from mage-sight, a brilliance of talent choked off in' blood on the banks of Tal Quorin; there existed no weal for its absence.

The Earl of the North was not swayed by pity. "Dania loved you equally well. She would call you impertinent, and say to you now that because of your sacrifice, her bloodline survives. Her four daughters still live unspoiled in my memory. If by Ath's grace you defeat Desh-thiere in my lifetime, then every one of my family will stand with me in spirit on the hour a Teir's'Ffalenn accepts his coro- nation."

"Let me be dead, first.TM Arithon gasped. "What rightful prince ever murders his feal liegemen?"

The despair, the deep canker of shame stabbed by guilt, at last was laid bare between them. Across misted darkness, Traithe leaned sharply forward. "The moment has come. Jieret, speak now!"

Rathain's caithdein set his jaw. Hardened against heartbreak, he bent and dealt his prince a hard, vengeful shake. In stark force, he said, "Listen to me! Stop crying martyr! Caolle chose not to die of your sword thrust. He got up on his feet and marched back to war 488.

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wearing bandages! Nor were the ships lost, or the craftsmen and crews arrested in Riverton. Arithon, he triumphed, despite every obstacle. By his choice and devotion, he gave back your design with only a few torn stitches. Cariadwin was even recovered from Corith, and full half of the men from the outpost."

"This is a dream," Arithon whispered, the spirit leached from his words, and the fight in him flattened to a whisper.

"No." Jieret held him, his unvanquished courage enough to cause pain, and his grasp unrelenting with the promise of the bittersweet dichotomy of life. "Everything's real! If you run now, prince, you'll never see the fruits you spent yourself penniless to reap."

Steam billowed. Traithe splashed more water on the rocks, which showed scabrous gray patches from cooling. The stifling darkness spun time into fluidity, while the herb-scented heat rose in waves and eroded all barriers between mind and emotion. Jieret waited. Each breath in his chest flamed new agony. The stillness in the body held clasped in his arms became harrowing, and despair crushed out hope like the immovable wall of a glacier. He understood too well: this was the crux point, the fragility of moment when victory or defeat hung in the balance, awaiting the flick of fate's finger.

Ever the swordsman, taught to fight for as long as his hand held one weapon, Jieret Red-beard launched his last, stabbing thrust.

"Caolle left you a legacy in the form of a Koriani witch's spelled quartz."

At Traithe's start of astonishment, the clan chieftain laughed, bro- ken free like snapped wire from the unmerciful, cranked pressure of strain. "Yes, it's true."

Another racked moment; then Arithon's frame began to shake, first in small jerks, and then in running tremors that caused Jieret a spurt of stark panic. He shoved to his knees, dragging Arithon half-upright.

His lungs filled to howl for a loss he had no fiber left in him to with- stand.

But Traithe touched him still.

The s'Ffalenn prince was laughing in jagged, hysterical spasms. "A spell crystal?" Arithon ground on through a shrieked, wheezing breath. "Morriel must be spitting like a goosed cat. Whose is it?"

"I'11 tell you," Jieret promised, stunned stupid by relief. Somehow he found the aplomb to sort language. "But not until you have eaten and rested. You're so worn right now, the irony would kill you, which was not what Caolle intended."

Lapsed back into quiet by weakness that skirted the brink of col- lapse, Arithon turned his head into Jieret's strong shoulder. "Caolle 489.

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was a rabid fox, and you are more devious than that fiend of a father who sired you. I will do as you ask, just to share in the joke. Now you have my word, can we please let in some fresh air?"

But Traithe had already anticipated. Dakar pulled the muffling cloth free from outside, and light streamed in on an inrush of c001 breeze that started Jieret shivering. While hands reached to assist, he turned his glad strength to pull Arithon out into daylight. Before they could bundle his spent limbs in the drover's cloak, his prince drifted into a faint.

"Don't worry," Traithe said, his face all wry delight as he peeled the soaked hair from his neck. "He'll revive fast enough when we douse him clean in the stream. The scout has stew waiting, and sleep without dreams will do much to mend lost resilience."

"Oh, Ath," groaned Jieret. He stood up, wobbly at the knees with Arithon's wrapped weight in his arms. "That's if we survive the spate of raw language. The one thing this prince hates like fire is being han- dled like an invalid."

"Well, that will just provide more incentive." Traithe's grin was pure mischief. "If he wants us to stop, he'll just have to rebuild his strength."

In fact, Arithon succumbed before they had extracted him from the rock pool. Dried and swathed in the drover's cloak, he slept without moving throughout the late afternoon. As evening fell, he roused long enough to taste the stewed venison shared out in the bowls Traithe kept at hand for his spellcrafting. Twice, Jieret's reflexes righted the container that slipped from his liege's slack fingers. No scalding invective marked either incident. When Arithon slipped off into sleep once again, Traithe scribed a healing glyph over his fore- head and snapped for Earl Jieret to stop pacing.

"Worry serves nothing. What we're seeing is nervous exhaustion."

Like echo, he fielded a sleepy croak from the raven, gone to roost to the night chorus of frogs in the marsh. "I know, little brother, you,~ too," he agreed in tart sympathy. Then, to Jieret, who hovered uncer- tain with his hands whitely clenched to the tang of his broadsword, he added, "Keep watch. If I'm right, your liege will rouse in the dark- est hours before dawn. He'll want to talk, and share the need for understanding companionship."

Settled to keep watch, while the studded patterns of summer con- stellations wheeled through the gaps in the oak leaves, Jieret oiled his knife sheaths. He compared stories with the scout, then, helped to tie new fletching onto worn arrows. While Dakar dirtied his hands 490.

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scraping the deer pelt, Felirin tested his new art of storytelling, until midnight saw all but the Sorcerer settled to rest.

"I haven't apologized, or thanked you properly for your help,"

Jieret said, his hands empty at last and folded against the stained leather of his baldric. "You've helped to restore a number of great gifts, among them the heart of my people. Like these scouts of Maenol's, we could see a harsh future as long as the Alliance keeps building. The headhunter campaigns from Etarra take their toll, but we can face anything, hopeful."

Traithe lifted his hat and raked back loose hair, the scar at his crown a jagged dark knot that belied his mild stance in the darkness.

"The world will spin differently, because of tonight. All things are connected, as Arithon knows, since he was raised to think like a sor- cerer. He still tries to honor his grandfather's teaching. That's why his failures strike hardest. You did well ,.'~ your handling. Few could have made him attentive after the sorrows that took place at Riverton."

"He is as my brother, more than my liege," Jieret admitted, then blushed for a feeling he had never dared mention.

Traithe arose, tactful, to leave him in privacy for the hour when his prince must stir out of dreams and ask for account of Caolle's dying.

The ending was two-edged, that the stay of victory for Tysan's clans- men had been won with no chance for a last word exchanged in rec- onciliation or parting.

Arithon's branding memory would still be of the sword thrust that had felled the friend who had righted the damage the Koriathain had set in his design.

"He will live with the gifts," Earl Jieret promised. "Though I swear I'd fret less if I had to bash the wind out of him, making the point stick with my fists."

The Sorcerer laughed. "You wear Caolle's stamp alongside of your father's. He will live on, for all that." Traithe gathered his satchel and snapped crippled fingers for his raven, which glided down from 'its roost in the treetops. It alighted, feathers folded like knives as it croaked testy inquiry from the threadbare perch of his shoulder.

"Fare you well, Earl Jieret. Wish your prince my regards." Then in short, limping steps, the Sorcerer turned away, to be far from Main- mere by morning.

Left alone with his thoughts, Earl Jieret listened, while the night celebrated its chorus of crickets and sheltered the rustles of foraging mice. The forest breathed life. Water and wind braided together in counterpoint. The agile bats swooped like manic shuttles, weaving their unseen strands on the loom of creation. Oddly content that his 491.

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fresh loss of Caolle could be shared, he almost missed the first stir of movement as Arithon roused in the drover's cloak.

The first words came spare with the acerbic, dry wit he remem- bered. "You've got me tied like an infant in swaddling. Damned lucky I don't have a killing need to piss."

Jieret settled back against the bole of an oak, his fringed buckskins blurring his angular form in the darkness. "If you did, we'd make wagers on how long you would take to fall sound asleep with your breeks down."

Arithon snorted. His hands moved, restored to a semblance of dex- terity as he freed the tucked cloak and flexed his constricted shoul- ders. Painfully gaunt, he paused to examine the shirt someone had given to cover his nakedness. "Make sure you say which scout l should thank."