"You don't like charity?" Jieret dared a grin behind his raised wrist.

"What you wore was scarcely fit for a rag to oil the edge of a weapon."

Arithon said nothing, the tenor of his quiet like a test.

"The shirt was mine," Jieret admitted. "Though you could have guessed that by the pitiful fact we had to hack a handspan off the cuffs."

"And the shoulders fall down to my elbows, I know. Caolle always said I was too slight to bear weapons, and I just broke my pact. I wasn't going to be first to pick trouble." Jieret swallowed.

The crickets filled in as Arithon shifted, then with tenacious effort, pushed his frame upright. Depleted as he was, his spirit was drawn wire. "Never mind the fool etiquette between prince and caithdein. As your oathbound brother, I'm sorry. Caolle was the right arm I never deserved. I'm grieved to have taken him from you."

"He took himself," Jieret said, truthful, and the difficult words of a sudden came easily as he described the altercation caused by his bull- headed past war captain on the subject of his prince's protection.

"Did you know, he tossed the younger men who volunteered into the river to make his point? The irascible bastard said if they couldn't best him at wrestling, they weren't fit to keep guard on the slop in your chamber pot."

"How like him? Turned pensive, Arithon also found the question spilled gently, without the barbed lash he had dreaded. "How did he die? You made me a bargain to buy my return, and by Ath, you'll need to deliver."

Under the kindly mantle of summer foliage, Jieret shared the tears and the triumphs that had won back the launched vessels from Riverton.

492.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

"So whose spell crystal have I inherited as my legacy?" Arithon ,~sked at due length.

"You couldn't guess?" Earl Jieret reached into the loosened breast ~~f his jerkin and tugged a fine silver chain over his riot of red hair.

"Caolle never did things by the half measure. He's left you his last power of revenge upon First Senior Lirenda."

Arithon choked, hands pressed to his lips, while his shoulders spasmed with dammed-back delight and wild laughter. "Oh, Dharkaron's sweet Spear! That's too rich." He extended a thin arm and accepted the gift. Caught starlight in the crystalline facets flashed like the forerunning bolt of a tempest. His remonstrance held humor as he closed his marked fist, silver links snagged like a looped strand ~f tinsel between his irreverent fingers. "You know such an object should be veiled in silk?"

"So ask a townsman," Jieret said, piqued. "If the bitch finds her nerves pricked, that's her just deserts for trying to play us like string puppets."

But if Arithon shared the release in snide humor, his grave counte- nance showed no breaking sign. He seemed queerly grieved, head tilted a listening angle to one side, while the chain magnified the run- ning fit of trembling that had reft the peace from his hands. "Is my lyranthe nearby?"

Jieret straightened, astounded by his urgency. "She's safe with the saddle packs. Why?"

Moved by Arithon's sudden, sweet smile of relief, he arose without question and fetched the priceless, wrapped bundle that had almost been lost in the disastrous flight out of Riverton. When the fine instru- ment was restored to the hands of the bard, Arithon laid the quartz crystal at his feet. He caressed the carved wood, musician to his core, and rapt with the call of his muse as he struck and fine-tuned each neglected, silver-wound string.

Then he launched into a haunting, free melody.

The cadence and the harmonies were like nothing before, speaking in lyric of sorrow and joy caught enraptured in a fired, double helix.

Earl Jieret wept. The notes spilled and soared, each one an exquisite needle of inflection too fine to endure, and each measure an unfet- tered, tingling ecstasy bridged over desolate emptiness.

In the gloom of the trees, the scout stirred and gasped. Felirin awoke, raised his head, and crumpled, his maimed hands clasped to still the demand of a mourning he could not bear to release lest he damage the sheer majesty of the spell.

Of the thralled listeners embraced by the Masterbard's talent that 493.

JANNY WURTS.

night, only Dakar the Mad Prophet came to suspect the melody was not wrought for Caolle; nor yet for the tragedy of a free singer's burned hands; nor even to commemorate the survival of a most severe trial of s'Ffalenn conscience. The phrasing, stamped into empathic clarity, was Arithon's tuned response to the cry of a solitary spirit imprisoned in the lattice of a Koriani spell crystal.

494.

Summer 5653 Catalyst Lirenda dreamed of a man and a melody, and awoke with tear- flooded eyes.

For one second, two, the sweeping immediate, razor-edged mem- ory held her fast across the transition. Still, she could hear the rip- pling, sweet peal of struck notes. Plangent, silvered strings spoke their appeal just for her, a cry to flood joy through every unfulfilled cranny in her heart.

Weeping as a creature possessed, she suffered through the jarring reorientation of finding herself bereft, alone, and jostled in the rolling discomfort of a blue-water ocean passage. As her elbow struck an uncompromising edge of adzed wood, and the pull of the oars thumped in vibration to the beat of the coxswain's drum, she recalled her true place aboard Prince Lysaer's royal galley. That awareness revived her mazed will. The beguiling cascade of lyranthe notes lost their hold, snapped away like a net of burst thread.

She sat up, mired in a salt-musty snarl of damp linens. Protective as a provoked lioness, she let trained perception dissect the shreds of impression that even now slipped through her memory. At once, she picked out the familiar trace resonance of her personal crystal. She knew then. Her chain-lightning leap into fury kindled a startling sting: the dream had ridden on the carrier tie between herself and her lost quartz. By the aching wound opened by that one-shot bolt of compas- sion, then the pang of regret that was hers, inflicted as the harmony tangled and dispelled, she could surmise the hand of the meddler.

495.

]ANNY WURTS.

Her fleeting recall yielded the vision of shadowed green eyes. She still felt the deft empathy which had combed through the haunted depths of her mind, grasping after impressions to reclothe in music.

She knew; and her rage brimmed over and outran all restraint.

Arithon s'Ffalenn had come to inherit possession of her personal spell crystal. Her life-tie to the quartz lattice had betrayed her, let him bare every weakness she possessed.

Her frustration found no outlet aboard Lysaer's galley. Alone in her cabin, surrounded by sleeping crown officers and men-at-arms sworn to the Alliance, she could not share confidence with anyone.

The tedious, rolling beat of pulled oars offset nothing but the thrum of sea winds, and the hissed wash of cloven wavecrests. The dense heat of summer languished belowdecks and bathed her in trickles of sweat.

The repaired royal fleet rowed the last leg of the crossing from Corith to the mainland. But denied vital access to the channel of her crystal, Lirenda remained as blind to event as the common seaman on deck. She could do nothing but throw off stifling bedclothes and lie in her close, lampless berth, awaiting the moment when the masthead lookout sighted first land beneath the louring towers of seasonal thunder squalls.

Lirenda slept again just past dawn. Drugged by heat and the cir- cling mill of her frustration, she suffered no dreams. This time no music came to haunt her. She emerged from a drowning, black well of oblivion to the filtered light of late afternoon. Clear over the groan of working timbers, she heard the running thump of sailors' bare feet over the decking above her. She clawed clinging tangles of ebony hair off the damp skin of her collarbones. Fighting groggy senses, she arose to refresh herself.

While she dressed in her meticulous layers of silk skirts and gauze- thin mantle of office, the activity on deck reached the fever-pitch anticipation provoked by an imminent landfall. She gathered from the bursts of excited talk and the flying strings of orders from the ship's officers that the peppery little navigator had not failed with his charts. He had led the fleet safely in to Orlest on the southwest shore of Tysan.

Swathed in her wind-fluttered, violet silk, Lirenda swept up the companionway. She displaced two off-duty oarsmen to gamer a view at the rambade. The stroke of the crew on the benches below seemed enlivened. While the tumult of anticipation quickened about her, the late weeks at sea seemed an interval removed, time sealed in a pocket of salt-scented tranquillity. The breeze led the change. It 496.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

brought smells of smoke and fish grease from the shoreside cook- fires, mingled into the sour, muddy reek of tidal marshes. Shoaling waters between ship and shingle heaved in striated tones of green enamel. Gulls flew, dipped gold in the late-day sun, which slashed through clouds strewn like feathers. The headland itself lay slatted in shadow, citrine as new ale where the marsh grasses spread tasseled seed heads.

During the burning, dry months of high summer, when the storms threw their rains off the coast, the tidal estuaries of south Tysan were worked for deposits of salt. Amid the fringed reeds at slack water, women raked crusted cakes into piles, while half- grown children sewed the glittering harvest into burlap for trans- port.

Past the low ground, flocks of goats grazed the stepped, rocky bluffs, raised like rucked baize above the path where a herdboy raced to warn the town of the arriving fleet.

Lirenda knew Orlest as a galleymen's haven. Here, captains put in to replenish provisions on their coast-hopping runs between the Riverton inlet and the rich ports past Hanshire.

As the oarsmen muscled the flagship against the chop of ebb tide, the town hove into view, tucked in a fold of the shoreline. Impressed in haze, and bounded in front by the scarred pilings of the traders'

wharf, the crescent-shaped settlement was ruled by the running swell off Mainmere Bay. The low-lying houses were built upon stilts against the floods whipped in by offshore storms. Trapped heat rip- pled the sprawl of limed fishing shacks, their humped roofs thatched with cut reeds, and netted down with pendulous stone weights. Beside their unassuming stolidity, Sailhands' Alley stood out like a gaudy twist of silk, with its signboard array of brothels and wineshops.

The town also hosted a seasonal fishing fleet. While Lysaer's gal- leys steered a bending course through the cork floats of vacant moor- ings, word of their arrival ran ahead. Doors banged and craftshops emptied. A burgeoning crowd lined the docks as the flagship drove in, sunwheel banners streaming.

As the oarsmen's stroke sheared her patched hull shoreward, from rail and rambade, one could pick out the pristine white tunics of oathsworn Alliance guardsmen cutting an agitated swath through the gawkers like the mismatched gleam of thrown ice.

"Something's afoot," the watch officer remarked, creased eyes trained ashore. "Or why would a contingent of royal men-at-arms be billeted in force at Orlest?"

497.

JANNY ~URTS.

The steersman chimed in, "They would come to hold news for hi~ Grace."

A likely enough guess; Orlest or Tideport were the lo await an inbound fleet from Min Pierens.

Lirenda tapped manicured fingers on the rail, raked over by rabid frustration. Her curtailed powers would not let her access lane auguries at a glance, and the ignominy burned. The possibility for upset could not be dismissed: her misjudgment over Caolle's life may well have allowed Arithon s'Ffalenn to seize bold advantage on the continent.

She must have unwittingly mused her irritation out loud.

"But of course, the enemy would not stand idle through the sum- mer." The reply intruded a pace from her shoulder; Lysaer s'Ilessid had apparently crept up through her moment of self-absorbed brood- ing.

He also had dressed for the landfall. Offset by the delicate sheen of her silk, his presence lost none of its magnificence. His impeccable, trimmed hair shone as burnished as filigree, and his pearls were cold fire in the sunlight. He was not smiling.

Anyone less than a Koriani observer would have missed his subtle satisfaction, as he added, "Did you truly believe the Shadow Master could be driven to unchecked flight without unpleasant repercus- sions?"

Lirenda's expression was fine marble veneer, impenetrable and aloof. A mere hour ago, she could have agreed without any sense of conflict. Now self-betrayed, subverted through access to her unde- fended quartz, she found herself battling phantoms. A masterfully tailored line of melody tugged her emotions on wild tangents, as if the imprinted perception of Arithon's intent gave the lie to his half brother's conviction.

Discomfited by Lysaer's probing interest, Lirenda returned a stare like chipped amber. "Why jab in pretense?" Her impulse for vengeance sparked out as small malice. "New discord but serves you.

Bring down the Master of Shadow, by all means. Should I do less than applaud the picked course of your destiny?"

Lysaer laughed in that forthright honesty which effortlessly recap- tured the heart. "Lady, your barbs are magnificent, but misplaced. Let us weigh the ill tidings before we presume to salvage the fruits of dis- aster."

Yet as the royal galley tied up at the wharf, no deft planning, nor calculated strategy of advance handling could smooth over the tumult which awaited the Prince of the Light.

498.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

Full night lay over the harbor, heavy as syrup with trapped warmth. Between the summer flicker of heat lightning, the rippled waters lapped like dark tarnish against the pilings, spindled with reflections from the torch pans set alight at the quayside. Amid that cast tangle of jittering light, Lysaer s'Ilessid stepped ashore.

The bystanders gathered to greet his return roared with one voice at first sight of him. Man, woman, and child, they surged against the men-at-arms who pressed to clear space for his egress. The prince took such mannerless enthusiasm in stride. All white silk and fitted elegance, he left the gangway, unhurried. As he passed down the wharf, his path became flanked by a wall of grasping, outthrust hands. The boldest strained against the cordon of soldiers, striving to touch his person for shared fortune, or to pluck at his glittering gar- ments for a ribbon or lace to treasure as a memento.

Lirenda paced the prince one step behind, daunted by the sheer volume of noise, and by the relentless needy scramble of the crowd.

The wharf narrowed past the jut of the ship's chandlery, with its stacked hogsheds of salt pork and beef. Royal guardsmen jostled a clear path with difficulty. The enchantress found herself unable to break away, even to lend polite semblance of privacy when the royal courier stepped to the fore.

He carried urgent news for Avenor's prince, a personal message too dire to withhold. "Your Grace, there's been tragedy. Best hear now, and quickly."

Caught in unwanted proximity, Lirenda shared the formal lan- guage of state which informed that his bewitchingly beautiful wife, Princess Talith, had passed the Wheel three months ago.

"By her own hand, your Lord Seneschal pronounced." Heads turned. The cheering near at hand faltered; still the messenger had to shout to make himself heard through the clamor. "Her Grace fell to her end. Succumbed to despair for her childless state and jumped from a high tower window."

Despite his matchless instinct for statecraft, Lysaer s'Ilessid missed stride.

For that given instant, he was no savior, no prince, no shining example to his people, but only a man, stunned by an unexpected, dark anguish. Grief exposed his humanity with leveling force. He fal- tered, stopped short. The flare of the firepans etched him in unmerci- ful light, each tremor of shock magnified by his jeweled studs and stitched seed pearls.

The sight of him humbled by wounding mortality struck Lirenda with inexplicable force.

499.

JANNY WURTS.

She lost her own breath at the devastated speed with which his sustained strength came unraveled. The draw of his charisma had claimed her, unwitting, his dedicated campaign against the Master of Shadow became a mainstay she required to buoy her tripped sense of balance.

As a hapless observer, she felt strangely bereft; as if perfect quartz cracked like glass under polishing, or clouds on a whim had trans- formed into lead, to crush the green earth with blind force.

Lysaer seemed oblivious to the presence of an audience. Eyes closed, his ethereal majesty transformed to unalloyed sorrow, he mur- mured aloud in his anguish, "My dear, my dear! If not for the machi- nations of the enemy, I should never have strayed from your side."

The First Senior moved on blind instinct. She would offer her man- tle, try any inadequate, stopgap gesture to shield his shattered poise from the insatiable maw of public curiosity.

Yet fast as she reacted, another pushed past and reached the s'Ilessid prince ahead of her.

This one wore the sweat-stained leathers of a courier who had transferred from post horse to post horse with small break for rest or refreshment. The chalky dust of the flats lined tired features, and his person wore the smell of hot horses and urgency.

He caught Lysaer's hand and dropped onto one knee. "Great lord, forgive me. I bring unpleasant tidings."

The Prince of the Light raised his head, eyes open and direct, if sus- piciously bright. "Speak," he bade the man. "No tragedy of mine is so great that I cannot respond for my people."

Then he waited in all of his shattered splendor for a second round of ill news.

Lirenda stood near enough to overhear the fact that forty of Han- shire's finest men-at-arms had pursued Arithon s'Ffalenn into a cloudy veil of magecraft.

"That event happened some time ago. It's not canny, to have escaped official notice this long. But the first courier sent to Avenor was waylaid by a freak accident. His report was delayed for two months." The dazed messenger tipped his face up to the prince, torn into terrified appeal. "Search parties have swept the flats east to west, until the worst can't be doubted. The whole company of forty has dis- appeared, and left not a trace on the landscape."

Lysaer met the entreaty head-on, the shimmer of the tears he would not shed apparent to his circle of observers. "My loss, and my people's loss is not so different." Even in grief, his acute sense of kindness prevailed. "Had you kin among the missing?"

500.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

The messenger looked devastated. "A brother."

He received the hand of the prince on his shoulder. "Then we sor- row together, as we act side by side." Lysaer summoned a voice like grained iron. "There are widows in Hanshire this day who are bereaved by the loss of a mate, as I am. For them, you will go now and arrange mounts for myself and twenty-five of my personal guard. Find a guide who knows the countryside. Tell him he may ask any sum he desires from my treasury if he will show us the place on the flats where this happened."

When the original courier in Avenor's city colors elbowed his way in to protest, the prince quelled his concern with hammered steadiness. "There are no remains to attend, I trust?" Since his lady's death had occurred in the spring, he scarcely waited for affirmation that Talith's body had long since been cremated. "Then the cere- mony to celebrate my personal regard for her can certainly bide a bit longer."

Lysaer made a painful effort to collect himself. Surrounded by darkness, beyond reach of the sultry glow from the firepans, his white tunic and jewels made him seem etched in light, a being set apart from the weathered squalor of the galley wharf. The dichotomy of his humanity hurt to behold as he raised his torn voice to explain. "I shall not return to Avenor until I have expended every effort to redeem this lost Hanshire company from the spellcraft which has spirited them from us."

The bystanders overheard. Struck by his purposeful denial of fresh loss, several women were moved to tears. First one man, then another began raggedly to chant, "Lysaer of the Light!" until the entire crowd at the waterfront had taken up the cry.