Time passed. The patterning built, then glimmered with resonant harmony. Mage-sight revealed the comatose Sorcerer cocooned in a geometric lattice of pure light.

Sethvir squinted through the balefire glare of his handiwork. Made wise through his earth sense, he knew the planet's energies could heal all that lived under sky, given time to allow their quiet influence.

But to a grievously shorthanded Fellowship, idleness was not an affordable option. As Sethvir completed the last step to fine-tune the outer band of energies, a waft of chill air flapped his robe against the spiked bone of his ankles.

He paused, caught his streaming beard in two tufts, and accorded the invasive breeze a glance like the tart nip of hoarfrost. "You took your sweet time arriving."

"Well, your summons was thoughtlessly inopportune." Luhaine huffed into a spin across the chamber. "The Koriani Prime Matriarch's trouble enough without you upsetting her complacency."

"She's just about paralyzed," Sethvir corrected, while escaped strands of hair slashed his ears, and streamed smoke from the sconces made his eyes water. "She's been battened in silk quilts and healers since the hour she wakened without the strength to stand up."

Luhaine disagreed. "Her temper's a volcano waiting to blow."

Tight, spinning eddies kicked trails through the fug as the spirit whirled again and plowed on in lugubrious pique. "You knew her First Senior's in detention at Capewell? Yes? Then I scarcely need 519.

mention the mischief that's certain to brew the moment she's called in to give her formal accounting. You'll have to agree the next round 6f intrigue will go all the worse for no watchdog on Morriel then."

Sethvir braced his feet against Luhaine's errant tempest, still clutching beard, while his eyes shone the vacant, flat blue of polished turquoise. "Whatever the Koriathain are plotting must wait upon Asandir's need."

Luhaine ceased his petulant prowl in the cavernous vicinity of the stairwell. "Very well. A Few minutes won't hurt."

Sethvir cocked his head, all his faculties disconcertingly aligned on the present. "When you left," he said, concise, "Morriel was teaching a green initiate the selective process for expunging the dross of an unwanted vibration without detuning a quartz-crystal matrix."

Luhaine was not mollified. "Which tidbit happens to bear directly on why Asandir needs assistance at all." In a blasting, crisp sibilance of arctic air, he exploded. "You'd think, having blinded the advantage of his mage-sight, the Teir's'Ffalenn could refrain from twisting the snake's tail this once!"

Sethvir's brows rose. He opened clenched hands. The cascade of freed beard spilled down his chest like wool dropped fresh from its carding. "You speak of Prince Arithon's gracious return of Lirenda's personal spell crystal?"

"I refer to the specific disharmonies in her quartz that he retuned with compassionate melody, yes." Luhaine shrank to a pinpoint of cold and lit on the snout of a gargoyle. "Morriel knows we left Dakar to guard him, but a spellbinder's wards are not an infallible protec- tion."

To stave off the chill, Sethvir retrieved his bushkins, and frowned at a spot worn long past salvage with a patch. "We are grown too few to manage our burdens, and since we can't borrow our spellbinder back, you're going to be gone more than minutes." He eased his tired footwear over baby pink toes, chin tipped toward the prone form arrayed in the pattern. "Asandir can't be left to heal unattended.

Traithe's south in Havish, finishing the wards on the coast for King Eldir. Who's left but me to ride out and rebalance the damaged seal over that grimward?"

A spirit obsessed with tight focus, Luhaine paused at last and seized the gist. "Ath spare us from ruin! How long was Asandir in there?"

Sethvir declined comment. The intricate conjury drawn and sealed through live lane force offered a grim enough testament: Asandir's sacrifice had detained him to the bitter limit of survival. His perilous 52O.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

victory had stabilized the unruly fabric of the haunt's dream long enough to spare one more foolhardy human from the throes of a fatal predicament. Now came the cruel cost: the grimward's tangential polarities had drained his regenerative faculties beyond the point where he could recover on his own.

"I couldn't have done that," Luhaine said outright. "Never mind the ~act I don't possess a body." Blunted now to respect like scraped bedrock, he admitted, "Prince Arithon's life is essential to see the Black Rose Prophecy completed. But to take on such risk for the sake of a misguided captain at arms was an act of softhearted insanity."

For the penalty extended beyond individual infirmity; the Fellow- ship's resources were already taxed beyond salvage. Luhaine could not shoulder the task which faced Sethvir. Stripped of mortal flesh, the fine energies of his spirit would become misaligned and erased upon contact with the raging, dire forces ringed inside the spelled bounds of a grimward.

Too fussy a perfectionist to stay passive in a crisis, the discorporate Sorcerer abandoned his perch on the gargoyle. He drifted over the pattern of the focus, and gave Sethvir's work his critical inspection.

Where he perceived nuance beyond reach of an entity encumbered by flesh, he came and went as a stiletto point of light, fretting a chain of minute adjustments to the energies already laid down. Luhaine con- cluded on a note of grudging admiration. "What has been gained for that one life, but a dangerous, misguided incentive? You know Sulfin Evend has sworn to become all Lysaer ever asked of a warrior priest."

"Balance," Sethvir snapped. His unwonted shortness revealed his own depth of misery as he padded toward the lower stairwell. Under the vaulted archway, he turned, his beard ends and hair wisped into frost cobwebs against the blank shadow beyond. "When Asandir wakens, he's to rest. Make sure he does if you have to barricade the doors to contain him."

"Borrow his horse, then," Luhaine suggested. "You won't keep him, otherwise." The eddy of his presence settled and rearranged, surrounding his colleague's battered form in a mantle of radiance that blazed sympathy in contradiction to his dour, ending comment.

"Stubborn as old granite, and pernicious when crossed. Well you are!" Luhaine insisted, as though Asandir had spoken in defense.

$ethvir hid his smile behind his crooked fist and ducked out, while Luhaine lectured the unconscious colleague he tended. "You've shown the bad grace and poor manners to walk through my being before, when I tried making sensible comments on your health."

Late Summer 5653 Judgment Swathed in quilts sewn with sigils of vitality chain-stitched in silver thread, and propped upright against goose-down pillows like piled snowdrifts, Morriel ruled the Koriani Order from an enormous, carved bed at Capewell. Reduced to a skeleton swathed in blanched skin,. she held the reins of her power close to her breast, her eyes still like fathomless beads of chipped jet. Her speech was sparing, each word precise as engraving.

She was attended night and day, served in her fragile state of infir- mity by no less than the sisterhouse peeress, her matched pair of pages, and a young girl initiate of exceptional talent, brought across Tysan in whirlwind haste from her first initiation at Cainford.

On the same afternoon Sethvir mounted his colleague's black stal- lion and rode out of Althain Tower, Morriel had a circle of seventh- rank Seniors immersed in deep trance at her bedside. Behind heavy, drawn drapes, the medicinal air wore expectancy like a brewing storm. Twelve candles burned upon silver stands arrayed in a perfect arc. Each enchantress was linked to a distant seer, tied by gifted sight to the free lane force that ranged in bands across Athera.

No draft flickered the beeswax candles. No shimmer teased the embroidery. The women held still as figures in wax. Their tranced tal- ents activated an array of quartz-crystal balls, pocketed in a half-circle formation amid the rose-pattern quilts tucked over the Prime's crip- pled knees.

The Koriani Matriarch probed into the orbs like the listening spider 522.

slung in the ride smile tu She ~ cloud across fled yo The heape~ wond~ Insi fiicke~ while flinty abov~ ,'~.

hope copp War( Asa~ tran poi~ safe on rot1 wi!

silver piled mous, rtched :s still each infir- tir of ~ross stal- av~ ring ~ct ght :al- cle ip- er FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

slung in the strands of her web. One of these showed the dark horse and the rider, standing knee high in gold meadow grass. A maggot white smile turned the crone's bloodless lips as that particular scrying unfolded.

She did not miss the fleeting moment when the crystal appeared to cloud over. Satisfaction twitched a ghost imprint of amusement across her emaciated face. "Watch closely," she instructed the molli- fied young girl who attended the scrying at her elbow.

The initiate leaned nearer. Her braided blond hair trailed across the heaped bedclothes, and lush, rosebud lips loosed a sigh of awestruck wonder.

Inside the crystal, almost too faint to catch, a starred pulse of light flicked and vanished. A waving expanse of empty gorse remained, while a barred hawk arose and soared on spread wings. It circled the flinty spire of the tower, then banked and sheared in a graceful glide above the road which carved through the greener hills to the south.

"Hah!" The Koriani Prime gave a cackle of reedy delight. "I'd hoped so!" A withered stiff finger signed a rune of thanksgiving in the coppery light of the candles. "Events progress in fair form. Althain's Warden has no choice but to engage the Great Circle at Isaer."

With his tower's main focus pattern fully engaged to stabilize Asandir's life signs, the lane force at that site could not be retuned for transport. Nor could an unstable grimward be accessed as a homing point for the Sorcerer in transit.

Reedy with satisfaction, Morriel finished her thought. "We can safely presume Sethvir will cross by magecraft from Isaer to the Sec- ond Age ruin at Mainmere. He'll be forced to ride the Taerlin road." A round distance of a hundred and fifty leagues gave due time to plan without Fellowship interference.

The child initiate raised a round, freckled face, still written across with amazement. "Can the Fellowship Sorcerers really shapeshift?"

"Dear, no." Morriel fixed her with lightless, fierce eyes hooded under domed lids and milk lashes. "Sethvir is a master illusionist."

She tapped the scrying crystal which imaged the flying hawk with the yellowed tip of a fingernail. "The travelers he encounters on his way will not see him. Even those with clairvoyance will believe they were brushed by no more than the shadow of a bird."

She trailed off, words lapsed into the labored hiss of forced breath.

For long moments, the sealed, airless quiet of the room absorbed her stifled frustration. The Great Waystone offered the power to cut through Sethvir's ploys of illusion. Yet Morriel dared not attempt mastery of its matrix in her current depleted condition.

The mere effort of speech left her prostrate. Eyes shut, her hands 523.

JANNY WURTS.

curled on the coverlet like the wind-frozen claws of a spa~ needed long minutes to ease her heartbeat enough to dismiss tl circle and the twelve remote scryers. The quartz spheres: arrayed on the quilt. Each was now attuned to track the deflec!

events imprinted on the earth's lane force. The sealed crysta continue to reflect their sequence of distant events until natural disunified the linking sigils.

With Sethvir's departure, no development held preceden, of the snag in affairs arrived home to roost at the Capew~ house.

Cut off from her access to the Great Waystone, Morriel h held her most critical business until the Fellowship w Luhaine, had been recalled to Althain Tower. Each passin~ became precious. Morriel hoarded her dwindled stamina ~ last of the Seniors filed out in a whispery rustle of silk. The door latch clicked shut.

"Veil yourself," Morriel ordered the sisterhouse peere~ musky stillness and the cat-footed shadows cast by the slov~ candles, the shattering impact of her next command ca unprecedented lack of formality. "The hour has come to p ment. You shall stand as the order's Ceremonial Inquisitor, ~ my voice through the coming closed trial."

The stout peeress started, then inclined her head. "Your w arch." Her round, suet face turned prim with austerity as sh to the armoire to don the black robes of high office. Despitt posture and clipped movement, she held no qualms assigned role; justice would be served for tho_~ ~-x~ of cfis which had disrtkvto~ .~%-~ ~renfty of her sisterhouse.

rl~e wide-eyed young initiate remained seated in stunned the bedside. The ritual about to commence was older than Ko~ dence on Athera. Afraid her presence may have been summari ten, she shrank, while one of the blond pages unpacked the silver-bordered layers of the inqu'rsitor's veils. When Morriel'..

gers closed over her elbow, she jerked with a soft, breathy cry.

"Bide, girl." The Prime's peremptory whisper seemed the glass beads through old dust. "You will stay on as a witness t To the statue-still page boy at her right hand, she de]

whipcrack instruction. "Fetch me the box with the Skyron fo~ go and inform the sisterhouse warden that the hour has con accused to stand before me and answer for her misconduct."

524.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

Upon receipt of her summons, First Senior Lirenda arose from her willow embroidery frame. She tidied her gold thread with unshaken hands. The needle she left pressed into drum-tight silk, like a fallen ray of light speared through darkness.

She could only hope the desperate strain did not show as she gave the page boy her acquiescence. Apparently without hurry, she removed her purple mantle from the clothes chest. Its folds sleeked her shoulders like poured Cheivalt wine, and spilled with extrava- gant grace over the shining cuffs of her matched bracelets, and her eight-banded robe of high office.

She had been Koriani First Senior for fifty-six years. Prepared in every detail for this audience, clear relief all but shook her, that the unbearable days of strained waiting had finally come to an end. She had not lost her heart or her spirit. Ignominy had not overtaken her courage and let her lapse into endless, pleading petitions for her Prime's intercession.

Yet the confidence born of her grip on main strength bled away as she arrived at Morriel's chamber.

The page boy swung open the strapped oaken door. "Madam," he bade her. "Enter."

Darkness as stilled as a panther's tread awaited over the threshold.

The air within breathed of close-kept secrets and a dusty perfume of dried lavender. For as long as living memory, the Koriani Prime had pre- ferred the night for her significant meetings. When council could not be avoided in daylight, she ordered her chambers kept dark. The curtains were sewn of black damask and velvet. The dagged valance was looped on silver rings, each cast in the sigil for eternity, the triple-coiled snake trapped forever in the act of swallowing its own tail. The sulfurous, can- dlelit well by the bedstead seemed sealed in an ironclad silence.

Lirenda loosened her fingers before they impressed sweaty marks on her immaculate silk. She, who had feared nearly nothing in life, almost lost the will to step forward.

Discipline saved her. Unbending in pride, she clamped down on raw dread and assumed the paper-thin semblance of dignity.

She advanced and acknowledged Morriel's presence, a meeting of eyes like crossed sword blades. Then she sank in traditional obei- sance. "Your will, matriarch."

The Prime returned no verbal greeting. A presence swathed in vio- let veils, she seemed a wire puppet embodied in cloth, with a bleached death's-head skull, and the folds of loose garments pinned in place with set diamonds. Seconds dragged by. The Prime spoke no word of acknowledgment. Apprehension sliced a dagger of ice 525.

J~N WUR~$.

through the pit of Lirenda's stomach. While the pause stretched into an engulfing stillness, the page barred the door at her back.

Three others were present by Morriel's behest, one an untried girl with flaxen-fair braids, and another a grown woman wearing a blank- faced, idiot's stare. Lirenda took a moment to discern the forehead tattoo which signified an initiate who had failed in her vow of obedi- ence. A deeper chill shocked her as she recognized the emptied crea- ture's face. There stood the young initiate who had failed in her sworn charge to hold the circle of Morriel's grand conjury. The tradi- tional penalty allowed no appeal. She would serve out her days as a mindless slave, her identity stripped through the power of the vows sworn through the Prime's master crystal.

Morriel would have her cruel reason for demanding the witless one's presence. Lirenda had not thought; had never imagined that she might be tested for the selfsame transgression.

This was no audience for private reprimand, but a closed-trial cham- ber. Subject to the Koriani Matriarch's sole judgment, Lirenda under- stood her defense might become her last chance for cognizant thought.

A darker veiled shadow embedded in the gloom to the right of Morriel's bedside called for the accused to stand before her Prime to be examined.

Lirenda arose. The unaccustomed, bitter taste of humility closed her throat as she gave the time-honored reply. "I stand before my bet- ters to serve."

She had taken her privilege and authority for granted. Now the sharp drop in status among her own kind left her frightened and rud- derless as the Prime laid unsteady, bird-claw hands on the ironbound coffer held by her second page boy. Her whisper invoked the release of the seals. Each protection gave way with a whine like parted wire, and points of burst light stabbed the dimness.

As Morriel raised the strapped lid, the young girl who cowered by the bedside rubbed forearms raised into gooseflesh. Lirenda knew well her chills were no phantom. The Skyron stone's presence was inimical as a predator, its etheric web steeped in old malice. Over the centuries while the Great Waystone had been held in Sethvir's cus- tody at Althain Tower, the smaller aquamarine had carried the bur- den of the order's heaviest rituals. Years and hard use had left its channels surly with overload. That imbalance could never be recti- fied; not without losing the stored records of a thousand vows of ser- vice chained like steel-bolted ice through its heart.

As the knifing hostility of the unveiled jewel settled over the cham- ber, Lirenda's dread became overwhelming. Her palms broke into 526.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

clammy sweat. The witless woman's stare drilled into her face, while from the chair that formerly had been hers, a green novice witnessed her fallen status with enormous cornflower eyes. Since by rigid tradi- tion, the order's Prime Matriarch never addressed an oathbreaker, the Ceremonial Inquisitor intoned the opening accusation.

"Enchantress Lirenda, you stand before your Prime to answer for willful acts and disobedience against your vow of Koriani service."

The matronly peeress smoothed the silver-bordered edge of her veil in prim self-importance and listed the formal charges. "You are accused of crossing a sealed ward without cause, and disrupting an act of grand conjury."

Lirenda bristled. After weeks of smothered pride in Prince Lysaer's company, and the ignominy of losing the crystal that accessed her trained talents, the moment's grinding weight of humility threatened her last grip on control.

Then Morriel signaled her readiness with a flick of a twig-thin fin- ger. "Begin."

The Skyron stone lay unveiled in its coffer, its surface cold and glit- tering blue as the faceted heart of a glacier.

"Enchantress Lirenda, by your vow of obedience, you are asked to stare into the crystal's matrix," the Ceremonial Inquisitor com- manded. "Lower your defenses. Surrender your mind for this inquest, that your innocence or guilt be established beyond any shadow of doubt."

Lirenda snapped at that moment. "Merciful Ath! This charge of oathbreaking is a mockery." Her protest slammed through the quiet like a shattering fist forced through lead. "As First Senior of the Koriathain, the authority was rightfully mine to use as I saw fit. I was summoned to Capewell because my Prime Matriarch had suffered a state of collapse. Certainly, ! broke no vow of initiation through my deci- sion to enter the observatory! If a personal shortcoming flawed my sub- sequent choices, that lapse is the one I must atone for. I demand a hearing in private. I will answer to my Prime for her broken conjury.

Whether I forfeit free will for impertinence, I refuse to submit to exami- nation for a transgression I did not commit!"

Behind silver-edged muslin, the Ceremonial Inquisitor huffed a breath for scathing rebuttal.

Yet the jerk of the Prime's skeletal forefinger froze her silent. Jet- dark eyes sheared across sullen gloom. Lirenda felt their angry weight bore into her, through her, reading and weighing; testing her down to the naked pith of the fear beneath her defenses.

She scarcely dared tremble. Her overpowering terror must surely 527.

JANN WURTS.

rip through, unstring her last pride and see her weep. She could not call back the ultimatum just issued. Unmasked by the threat of the Skyron crystal, shamed before three indifferent witnesses, she could only endure, while sweat rolled down the channel of her back and soaked ragged stains in her silk.

No one spoke. Against the patched play of shadows, the few tall candles cast tips of sulfurous light. Splashed like disjointed fragments of dream, the quartz spheres on the counterpane flashed impressions of ordinary events recapped from distant sites on the continent: afiy- ing hawk, a dark-haired shepherd child, a leaping trout in a stream. In Tysan, a master shipwright inspected a load of new wood. In Havish, the royal mid- wife confirmed a queen's pregnancy. In Shand, a fat spellbinder paced down the Innish wharf to meet a dory off an inbound brig.