'Free will!' cracked Traithe, sharp as adamant steel. 'Go in without knowledge and dare the alternative: a half-brother bound by geas, worshipped as a false avatar, and drawn under the abomination of the Kralovir's practice. His officers will fall first, then next month, or next year, such breeding horror will run rampant throughout the hapless ranks of the faithful. You face the choice, prince, for more than one kingdom, and for more than Athera's grand mysteries: to take your informed stand now, at the forefront, or to recoil and find yourself overtaken. I need not say what you already know. Only one of those paths is the master's!'

'The mercy that kills!' Incensed, Arithon shoved off and paced. 'The Betrayer has hobbled your compact quite neatly.'

Yet release was past reach. Having once touched the presence of a centaur guardian, he did not stand blind: the profound awakening of Paravian grace had changed his awareness forever. The flame born of that one glimpse of expansive love now seared mind and heart almost beyond self-preservation.

To Melhalla's caithdein, whose tradition was maintained by rote, the yawning chasm of this prince's conflict could not be grappled. Her limited view would see nothing beyond the appeal to a crown prince's sworn duty. Yet the Fellowship Sorcerer, and the eyes of the raven, perceived what was actual and real: that no living experience could supersede the importance of preserving a greater beacon of truth, untarnished and free on Athera.

No matter how clear the choice, or how shining the view revealed to the awakened visionary, the break with human ties could not be painless.

Arithon wrestled the hurt of that severance. Entrapped between the dimmed frame of his past and the limitless light that posed all the hope of the future, he appealed, 'Who will explain to the brothers s'Brydion as the enemy rams their front gates? What about Erlien s'Taleyn of Alland? His clans are exposed, and already committed!' Since no answer met him, he flung out his hands, spurred by his flash-point frustration. 'Had Lysaer ever received the bare basics of training, he would have been given the fair means to stand guard for his birth-born right to autonomy!'

Traithe sighed. 'So the Fellowship's augury foresaw, and I tried. Any one of us would have granted such learning. Yet Lysaer never asked. On the hour I s.n.a.t.c.hed the opening to broach the first question, he gave me no foothold, not even the opportune grace of ambiguity. By choice and free will, your half-brother denied us the leave to pursue the first step towards a guided initiation.'

'He was not proud,' Prince Arithon insisted. 'Lysaer had a strict father who taught him, too early, that only a shameful king asks for help.'

'Said is done,' Traithe said softly, while the raven looked on, black as a starless midnight. : Three sets of eyes shared the harrowing interval, as no less than Paravian survival swung in the trembling balance. While a desolate man wrestled to reconcile the decision laid onto his overtaxed shoulders, the woman charged to rule as caithdein of Melhalla was made to measure a dread that pressed caring resilience to the brink of rebellious, insane rejection. She found, after all, she could not bear to witness the force and breadth of such agony. Head bent, she stared without sight at her realm, reduced to inked lines on the map.

Only the Sorcerer in his dark robes sustained the unbearable moment. Silver hair to tucked feet, Traithe held Arithon's eyes, as piercingly still as his raven.

Rathain's prince spoke at last. At bay in the shadows, arms crossed at his breast, he found his m.a.s.t.e.r.b.a.t.*rd's poise inadequate. 'Fatemaster's fury! I swore a promise to young Fionn Areth regarding Tal Quorin's survivors.' The ache of his grief tore through his voice and his bearing as he accosted Melhalla's caithdein. 'Where is he? I'll need to explain.'

Words failed her, then. As the stout woman lost her nerve, unable to spare the least of the blows that fell in her presence that night, Dakar responded, unasked and unnoticed, arrived in silence through the flapped entry.

'The task must be left to Vhandon and Talvish. I'm sorry. The north is too volatile. Fionn Areth's better off kept here, inside clan protection in Atwood.'

Summer 5671 Changes Beset by rain, a drifter woman kneels in soaked gra.s.s, attending a foaling mare; shown two tiny front hooves, she peels the caul from a coal-black head and reveals a ghost eye, pale as aquamarine gla.s.s in the lantern-light, 'Isfarenn!' she gasps through the drumming downpour, 'Merciful grace! Asandir's horse has sired his successor . . .'

At sunrise in Atwood, Vhandon and Talvish receive word from Melhalla's caithdein that the s'Brydion alliance has been dissolved by Prince Arithon, with his Grace departed at speed for the north without sending summons or word; stunned by the wrecked plan to disarm East Halia, the forsaken liegemen depart to stand with their duke, and outraged to be served with a broken pledge, Fionn Areth leaves with them . . .

At sea off the coast of Carithwyr, Lysaer s'Ilessid states the emphatic terms of his disputed landfall at Spire to his recalcitrant Lord Commander: 'I will not be seen to strike my banner or skulk for the sake of a high king's crown edict! If Eldir has disbarred my sunwheel standard, we'll put into a cove on the coast of Radmoore, and finish the journey to Ath's hostel by land . . .'

Summer 5671 XII. Halwythwood The clan enclave deep inside the free wilds of Halwythwood was forewarned of the royal arrival about to occur at Caith-al-Caen. News came with the Koriani enchantress who had just finished a term of sanctuary at Ath's hostel. She had left Eastwall and crossed the free wilds of Daon Ramon Barrens on foot, without asking the auspice of clan escort. The connection she claimed to Prince Arithon, and her relayed word, that his Grace meant to fulfill his belated acknowledgement of the past winter's harsh losses, prompted Barach, as Earl of the North, to grant her the crown's hospitality. At Feithan's insistence, Elaira accepted guest welcome under the roof of the s'Valerient lodge tent.

Yet when the fated arrival drew nigh, the enchantress announced her decision to make herself scarce. 'Your crown prince is going to ride in exhausted, and in raw straits from a harsh set-back. Let him unburden himself, first. My near presence would only place strain on his focus, no boon to the delicate handling he'll need through the course of his feal obligations.'

'Such love as you bear him should back his male strength,' Feithan felt moved to point out. Insistently busy, she rammed her awl punch through a new set of leathers, and bestowed a wise smile upon the bronze-haired enchantress who helped split the sinew for lacing.

Elaira set down her sharp knife and blushed. 'Not this time.' Her wry grin threatened laughter. 'Believe me! I know him. When Arithon's heart is clear of his sworn duty, I will be at hand to receive him.'

'You can't know what you're missing.' Feithan winked back. 'Sure as rain falls, if my Jieret were living, I could not greet him with such virtuously staunch restraint!'

Yet no man alive trod the thicket of thorns imposed on the Prince of Rathain. Few women allowed him the s.p.a.ce for his needs, and none with Elaira's perception. She chose to slip off and joined an out-bound party of hunters on the excuse to replenish her herb stores. The scouts did not forbid her outsider's presence. Her time with Ath's adepts had graced her with an inner knowing tuned into accord with the land's voice. Left to fare as she pleased, this enchantress could be trusted to respect the ancient ground of the dancers' glade and its spring beneath Thembrel's Oak. Her successful traverse of Daon Ramon Barrens already had proven she knew not to intrude on those sites where the great mysteries abided in solitude.

Against Eriegal's complaints that the rough gaits of ponies chafed his shorter legs raw, he, Sidir, and Braggen, as the Companions at hand, rode out to the Paravian circle to meet their returning prince.

The caithdein's successor, who should have gone with them, remained in the camp by the Willowbrook. Jeynsa's flagrant rebellion had not softened. She would not back down and accept her invest.i.ture, despite Braggen's exhaustive exoneration of the prince she had been Named to serve. Since her rejection was still flaunted by her bristle of close-cropped hair, her brother's direct order disbarred her from joining the welcoming party.

Too proud not to live by her heart, Jeynsa rejoiced in her banishment. First, she renewed the fletching on her deer arrows. Then she whetted her favourite skinning knife, and tested the edge by carving a decorative relief into a strip of boiled hide.

Mourning the loss of her father, each breath, she cursed the name of the Sorcerer who had marked her as caithdein's heir within days of her birth. Soon to confront the uncanny creature whose defence had divided her family, she awaited her inevitable clash with crown protocol in combative antic.i.p.ation.

The journey to Caith-al-Caen and back to the secure encampment in Halwythwood required three days, unless pressured circ.u.mstance demanded speed. Jeynsa's hostility kept her uninformed of the crisis that hastened the timing. The lapse came at high cost. She was not absent stalking, as she had planned, on the hour of the prince's arrival.

Instead, the event caught her drowsing behind the great trestle at the back of the s'Valerient lodge tent. Inbound voices aroused her, Eriegal's, raised to an untoward pitch of excitement, and Braggen's, dour with sarcasm. Jeynsa started awake where she slouched, propped against a gra.s.s-stuffed ha.s.sock. She was still seated cross-legged on the packed-dirt floor, well sprinkled with shavings of leather. A lowered light burned past the privacy flap. Her mother was wakeful, although the hour was well after nightfall.

The tallow-dip on the bench had gone out. Lapped in dense shadow, the Teiren's'Valerient groped in her scrip for her flint. Dame fortune betrayed her: the darkened wick proved to be already spent, too short for her to rekindle.

Jeynsa swore. Caught at odds while the fast-moving band of Companions strode up to the curtained entry, she recognized Sidir's ba.s.s tone, giving guest welcome.

The ritual reply was delivered in a stranger's exquisitely cadenced Paravian.

She was trapped in the lodge. Furious that her brother had left her unwarned, and blindsided to face this encounter, Jeynsa froze. To bolt now would seem the act of a craven. She dared not slink into her mother's quarters. Feithan would just dress her down like a child, then march her back out on the force of parental authority. Denied every option to salvage her gaffe, unable to shed rage for diplomacy, Jeynsa gave rein to her mannerless impulse. She scrunched herself into the bulk of the ha.s.sock, entrusting the shadows to hide her.

The door flap slung back. Sidir poised at the threshold, his tall frame half-turned, the sable gleam of his braid and white temples distinct against starry darkness. 'Come in. Take your ease.'

While another mantled form filed past, too short to reveal a clear silhouette, Sidir ducked under the lintel, still speaking. 'I'll strike a fresh light. Once you're both settled with cups and a flask, we'll bring Feithan to greet you.'

Moving through gloom with the ease of a woodsman, Sidir flipped open the lodge tent's stores chest, while the others entered behind him: a stout man with thumping steps and a wheeze, hard followed by Eriegal's clipped stride. Braggen came last, his muscular tread picked out by the gleam of his weapons. Then the hide flap slapped shut. In the dark, the heavy-set new-comer advanced with intent to park at the trestle.

Too late, Jeynsa realized her fateful mistake: the spellbinder Dakar accompanied the prince. No cover of darkness was going to withstand the talented range of his mage-sight.

Nor were his keen attributes blunted by drink: he had needed to a.s.sist with the lane transfer. The scouring, strong forces had left him honed sharp, if disgruntled from hours of hard riding. 'My throat's parched enough to cure bacon,' he grumped. Plonked down to a squealing creak of stressed wood, the Mad Prophet encountered Jeynsa's tucked boot, then her shrinking presence, jammed into the shadow.

No slacker, he ventured a warning, 'We're not alone.'

The other's light tread had crept up undetected: the response came back all but on top of her.

'I was aware.' The sorcerer who was the Crown Prince of Rathain added with slicing contempt, 'We won't know, now, will we, what measure of welcome eavesdrops in the crannies to meet me?'

The insult whipped Jeynsa onto her feet. The razor-edged knife lately used to incise decorations slithered out of her lap. She s.n.a.t.c.hed, recaptured the dropped steel by reflex, while the c.u.mbersome strap of boiled hide thumped to earth at her feet, wrapped her ankles, and tripped her. She crashed into the trestle. Her left-handed grab saved her from a fall. But no timely reaction could salvage her livid humiliation.

Sidir's exclamation, 'She's a rash adolescent!' clashed outright with Arithon's jabbing mockery. 'Is she, by Ath? I'd have pegged her age at five years younger!'

Civility snapped. Jeynsa lunged. In the dark, her tormenter was a slight, faceless stranger, despoiling her home with his cruel jibes and his ungrateful, insupportable arrogance. Rage impelled her. She forgot the small dagger clenched in her fist.

Her royal nemesis was not taken off guard. His hard, agile parry caught the keen steel in the rain-cloak bunched over his forearm.

Shocked to outcry, Jeynsa felt her well-tended blade stab into shielding cloth. Her recoil failed. His advance jammed her strike. Though her grip had gone slack, the dirk pierced the folds and snicked into flesh. She felt the horrific, slick gush of a wounding. Then the heavy, oiled fabric yanked back and jerked the snared weapon out of her grasp.

Sidir's effort at last sparked a flame. As his pine torch flared into dazzling light, Jeynsa was caught aback yet again: the whirled cloak dropped from nowhere and battened her face. Her ruthless royal adversary reeled her in. Then his wrenching tug spun her. Left forearm pinned under his bleeding wrist, hard against his unlaced shirt front, Jeynsa sensed the warm skin at his breast, and far worse, the beat of his heart, that did not race. Arithon displayed no sign of startlement, a sure sign her hostility had been expected.

'Dharkaron's Black Spear!' Eriegal gasped in struck shock. He shoved forward, prepared to pull Jeynsa away. As Braggen's rough fist caught him back by the shoulder, he pealed on in shamed disbelief, 'She's the Fellowship's marked choice as caithdein's heir, and Ath save us, she's just tried to kill you!'

'Nothing like!' came the prince's granite response. 'Braggen, shut him up. Sidir, no questions. Clear every-one out. You all have just witnessed the start of an oath sharing. Leave now. I would finish in privacy.'

Choked under oilcloth, outraged to be served this unwanted excuse that would bestow an unequivocal exoneration, Jeynsa struggled. His firm grip clamped down. Her entrapped arm became savaged by a locked hold that was going to leave bruises, later.

'Go, now!' lashed the prince, no doubt pushed to speak twice because the Companions distrusted her temper. Yet they would not gainsay a royal command.

The cloth impaired hearing; masked footsteps and movement; but not the squealing creak of the bench or the m.u.f.fled slap of the door flap. The prince's excruciating grasp scarcely slackened. Although Jeynsa had never intended to fight, her shivering rancour betrayed her. He sensed her core hatred, kept her immovably pinned as a wrestler. Then his expert hold shifted. He did not sit her down. Her left hand and forearm stayed clamped to his chest, slick with the let warmth of his blood. Beyond resentful, still livid with anger, Jeynsa felt his quick breath. She closed her eyes, braced.

Yet Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn did not scorn her with reprimand. Instead, he invoked the Paravian rune of beginning. Then, centered in calm, he began the ritual of a mage's sworn bond of protection. '"Your self: as my own. Your breath: twined with mine. Two bodies: one flesh for this lifetime."'

Jeynsa shivered, struck helpless. Daughter of s'Valerient, she had the born talent to sense the bright power as his initiate oath wove about her.

'"Your spirit to my heart: bound unto death."'

Whirled beyond protest, Jeynsa could not move, could not shout, could not recoup her resistance. Lifted to a sudden spinning euphoria, enclosed in shining warmth, she sensed the currents of mage-bonded light as they st.i.tched themselves over, and through her. The moment commanded: she shared Arithon's heart. The gift he bestowed gloved her being in tenderness, undid her like water, and cradled her form as though precious.

Then the closure rang down and locked his sealed will into irrevocable finality. '"Dharkaron as my dark witness, my Word as sealed by my Name in Ath's light, none to sunder. Yours to call, mine to answer, until the Wheel of Fate grants one of us crossing. Anient,"' he said. 'Done.'

Already, Jeynsa felt his rigid clasp opening. Half-unmoored, she scarcely noticed the tactful support as Rathain's prince sat her down within saving reach of the trestle. After that, mercy moved him. His touch retreated. Left veiled in the cloak, she could endure the desperate tears that streamed over her cheekbones.

Jeynsa wept out the storm. Outside the m.u.f.fling shelter of cloth, the lodge tent seemed to be empty. Yet she dared not presume that her sovereign had left or called an end to his spontaneous audience. Therefore, she held out until her eyes dried before she relinquished the pretence of'privacy.

When she tossed off the cloak, her suspicions proved true: the insufferable prince had not left her. He sat on the other side of the trestle, stilled enough that even her forest-bred senses could have overlooked his immediate presence. A tallow-dip burned, lit by craft and not striker: the sc.r.a.pe of a flint would have broken the silence. The offending knife rested next to her hand, its cleaned blade a cold gleam in the dimness. Busy presumption had not ended there. Arithon had helped himself and fetched the flask of spirits from Feithan's provisions. Two cups waited, empty, between them, a mute invitation to seed amity.

Jeynsa refused to look at his face. Her antagonized nerves remained too disjointed. The unbearable care she had sensed in his oath would not let her encounter him fully.

Sight of his hands could not be avoided, cast into relief by the pooled spill of flame. The scarred right rested loose on the trestle before her, while the left pressed the shredded wreck of his sleeve to stanch the red seep of the knife-cut. The brutal fingers that had rendered her helpless were exquisitely fine, though ringless as any clan scout's. Jeynsa noted their mirrored imprint gouged into the skin of her wrist. The more searing memory would outlast abused flesh. Her fresh anger accosted the crown figure whose absence had shadowed her life, and whose errant doings had destroyed her father. 'I will not be cozened to lean on your grand oath. Nor will I ever reciprocate.'

The words satisfied for their perfect, chill ring.

'I hear you.' The velvet tone that had shown its trust first picked up again after a moment. 'Your preference is honoured.'

But that promise mocked, set against another that demanded her iron devotion. 'You would gainsay the Fellowship's choosing?' Jeynsa stiffened, affronted. 'Or are you afraid that in cold-blooded fact I might take my next chance, and back-stab you?'

His stark pause affirmed that a caithdein's vested power would endow her with the lawful right to stand as his judge and condemn him. Arithon's response showed his razor-edged care. 'You are Jieret s'Valerient's daughter.'

No fool, he had not poured the brandy.

Wrung breathless by her resurgent pain, Jeynsa seized the cup on her half of the trestle and placed it onto its side. In case he failed to recognize that symbolic rejection, she said, 'Craven! How dare you invoke my sire's good name to beg surety!'

When Arithon ventured no token response, she hooked up the dropped cloak and scoured off the smeared trace of his blood from each of her quivering fingers. On her feet before thought, she glared downwards. In vivid impression, the insightful awareness: that he was small - light-boned as a cat before her taller stature and hardened fitness. The immediate recall cracked her equilibrium: of his expert, sharp handling, that had just imposed a demeaning submission with an ease that had made her seem childish.

I saw how my father died!' Jeynsa exploded. 'Wielding sorcery as your proxy, he choked out his last breath with your half-brother's sword through his heart. He was tortured. Crippled! Spat on by enemies before their unblessed fire destroyed his torn carca.s.s.'

Arithon regarded her. Unwashed from his ride, with his lean face unshaven and his dark hair tousled by weather, he should have seemed raffish. A renegade reduced to his seamy humanity, flawed, and beneath her contempt: except the intensity of his focus would not dismiss. He showed no pity; did not denigrate her tear-stained cheeks or broach the outrageous precedent of her shorn hair.

His eyes spoke, all too eloquent in the whipped spill of flame-light.

Jeynsa watched him back, hardened, aching to receive the brisk quittance that his crown rank ent.i.tled through protocol.

Instead, Arithon elected to treat without artifice. 'You did not cut off your hair to spite me. You did that for grief, to acknowledge the shame that your father endured. Your act reminded you not to forget the harsh price he paid for my life, that his dying act left as a bartered legacy.'

Such relentless insight tore past all pretence. The bereft beheld her deep agony, mirrored.

'Don't ever forget, Jeynsa,' urged Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn. 'Grow back your clan braid. Let me stand in this world as your steadfast reminder for as long as I live to draw breath.'

His tactful correction struck like a slap: that the span of his days could extend beyond hers. The Master of Shadow might seem untouched by time. Yet his actual age was older than Feithan; his birth had preceded the Companions. A Sorcerer's working imposed a longevity that was going to bind him for centuries.

Stung by his poignant censure, Jeynsa scoured his features. At close quarters, she yearned to unearth the glib falsehood: the facile mask that would catch him short and lay bare underlying insincerity.

No subterfuge met her. Only the clarity of an initiate mind, voluntarily stripped of defences.

Arithon laid open his mage-sense, and touched, and the talented prompt of s'Valerient Sight arose to that calling, and answered.

Jeynsa sensed herself falling, awareness unreeled through the vaulting reach of a sorcerer's lucent experience. She was left ungrounded. Even as her father, years before this, bore the horror of Tal Quorin's ma.s.sacre, she knew the encounter would not leave her unchanged. No foothold existed to save shattered balance. She could not disown Arithon's value. Shocked by the scope of his inward devastation, Jeynsa realized: the crown prince's desolate hurt outmatched hers. Jieret's death had once reft him beyond hope of healing. He still carried the scar of that crippling despair. A severance that damaged both will and integrity had left behind an una.s.suaged longing that, if Arithon escaped the trap of Desh-thiere's curse, must outlast her own grief for untold generations to come.

Yet unlike her, he had not yielded to pain. The unearthly calm posed by his acceptance itself was the cry that challenged her wound and pressed her for endurance to match him.

'How have you survived?' Jeynsa blurted.

'I nearly didn't.' The admission stayed level. Before her anguished, peeling regard, Arithon held himself naked. 'The crossing came hard, but need not have. In Kewar's maze, when I shared the grace of a centaur's presence, I saw Jieret's choice reconfigured by light as an act of exultant triumph. His love superseded my limitation. I could reject him, and die. Or I could embrace the gift as he meant: not as the dutiful burden of heritage, but done as an accolade, without condition.'

Jeynsa slammed the bared boards. This, she could not endure. No prince, but a man, and a stranger, offered up his core self, all the while aware that he must fall short. All that he was could never replace the father - the friend - whose courageous heart and generous strength dealt a priceless loss, shared between them.

She suffered because her father had set this one spirit ahead of a safe return to his family. Nor was Jieret's hideous death rendered empty, or foolish, or in any way the mistake of a devalued sacrifice.

Arithon had not tried to console, or excuse. He did not demean by apology. That seamless humility shaped a force too unnervingly whole to withstand.

Jeynsa clawed back her dagger. Goaded on by her ungoverned denial, she dashed the two cups aside. A second blow smashed the decanter. Shards flew. Brandy gushed and spilled. Doused by the flood, Rathain's prince never flinched, though his lost calm revealed the fresh hurt her rejection tore through him.

Past her, he saw Steiven, and Dania, and Jieret, and the hacked bodies of four daughters, violated. Through Jeynsa, his ghosts spoke, a gale-wind from a storm that scattered the hope he might reach her.

'Go on!' whispered Jeynsa. 'Admit how I hate you, before your ripped flesh has stopped bleeding.'

Silent, he held, while she quivered and broke, spirit dashed on the wrong side of quietude.

'I can't drink,' she snarled, bitter. 'Can't swear you a welcome. I look at your face, and I hear father screaming. His burned eyes and cut tongue were the cost of your lineage. The sound of your name is accursed in my ears. The shame of his degradation will not find redress for as long as you live.'

Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn inclined his head, a small move made in resignation. The tension of contact snapped in release.

Unstrung, Jeynsa bolted, heedless as a hazed deer. Hard and fast as she left him, she could not escape. In life, her father had never denied the depth of Prince Arithon's compa.s.sion. At her core, Jeynsa knew: Earl Jieret had written his own fate, that dreadful hour upon Daon Ramon Barrens. He had crossed Fate's Wheel by a choice that was given, for a love that was both right and true.

The lie did not hold. Pretence gave no shelter. The crown prince whose oath bonded her in protection remained, then and now, everything else but unworthy. No breathing creature should burn with such grace, to eclipse the ache of her abandonment.

Outside, Jieret's daughter careened into Eriegal's stout arms and howled until she was emptied.