Fugitive Prince

by Janny Wurts

“Mistress,” he requested, then thanked her generosity in fair dialect as she surrendered the use of her rushlight.

  The flame jerked and fluttered as the boy brought the wick. Mearn ran his thumb over the wafer of wax, impressed with the ancient seal employed by Tysan’s caithdein for personal use through the centuries of fugitive exile. The choice of devise confirmed a most risky necessity, unrelieved by the fact the first missive set down upon formal parchment was inscribed to his Grace, Eldir, High King of Havish. The second note bore Mearn’s own name in a script astonishingly erudite. He had never seen Maenol’s written hand. By wary habit, the forestborn clans wrote no messages for fear such might fall into the hands of town enemies.

  That Lord Maenol had seen fit to wield pen and ink bespoke desperation and appalling finality. Mearn gripped the note, reluctant as stone. For an agonized instant, he wished himself far from this site in the marshes, that he not be the one left to carry whatever burden the sealed parchment was bound to contain.

  Then, as if stung into branding impatience, he ripped the seal open. Wax bits arced through the gloom like flung gravel. Tagged by the flickering, uncertain flame light, eyes stinging with humility, Mearn read.

  The first line requested his assistance to deliver an appeal to King Eldir. Tysan’s caithdein would beg sanctuary in Havish for the refugee survivors who managed to win free of Alliance persecution against clanblood. The cost in pride, in pain, in the sheer magnitude of that understated defeat raised a knot of remorse in Mearn’s chest. Scarcely seven years since the massive downfall at Vastmark, Prince Lysaer had succeeded in unseating a clan presence whose roots went back five thousand years. Words were inadequate to express grief and heartache, that without the trials of the Mistwaith’s curse, these same clansmen should have sworn the same man their loyalty.

  Now naught could be done but watch entropy march through the breach. The bottomless demands of trade and crown treasury held small care for the great mysteries. No means existed to soften the blow, that Arithon’s loss of three brigs at Riverton might impact all future generations. A clan abdication of Tysan’s free territory would leave townsmen free rein for desecration. Unwilling to admit such a weight of despair, Mearn stamped back bleak thoughts.

  The boy watched his face, restrained into choked stillness that bespoke an unkindly awareness of consequences. The hovel’s thick warmth and the fenwoman’s welcome lent him no ease.

  Mearn tucked the missive for King Eldir away, then fought for the presence to peruse the second request.

  There, even Lord Maenol’s steady hand faltered, the letters formed into jerked lines of reluctance as they charged s’Brydion by word of honor to admit the boy named Ianfar s’Gannley into Mearn’s personal household as a page.

  ‘The boy is my uncle’s son,’ Maenol’s words stated, torn by small gaps as though more than once the ink had dried on the quill nib. ‘As of this moment, he stands as my heir. He will inherit should I pass the Wheel without leaving progeny. My scouts just brought word the Alliance forces are closing the east passes. I see no better way to ensure the boy’s safe deliverance from Tysan’s sovereign territory. I charge you, by your family Name, keep him safe. If my war captain in Camris survives me, the raising of Ianfar must fall to him. Should that one perish, seek fosterage with any forestborn family you see fit. Be sure he learns what he must to rule after me.’

  Mearn closed his fingers, crumpling the parchment with a burst of animal savagery. Too grim to weep, he used all his anger to resmooth the crushed leaf, which he then rearranged into razor-sharp folds and tipped into the spill of the rushlight. Smoke billowed black. The acrid reek of burned hide rode the air, and the fenwife shot upright, exclaiming.

  One look at Mearn’s face shocked her silent. Through the dirty orange flame that crawled up the charred missive, the brother of Duke Bransian s’Brydion met the paralyzed gaze of young Ianfar s’Gannley. “I accept both charges laid on me by your chieftain. Will you formally agree to my guardianship?”

  The boy tucked his hands under his arms, too brave to show he was shivering. He knew well enough his consent entailed the unspeakable possibility that his clans might be driven to yield up their sovereign charge in Tysan. Almost, his heart seemed to fail him. The underlit shadow thrown by his lashes made his eyes seem too large and too bright.

  Then the stark, gritty fiber of his people shone through. “I bow to the will of my caithdein and the demands of necessity.” His dignity far more in that moment than many men managed in a lifetime, he bowed. “In gratitude, s’Gannley gives thanks for the generosity of s’Brydion.”

  “This is not charity, boy,” Mearn denounced, gruff. He tossed the last flaring embers to the floor, which was earth, and damp enough not to lend fuel to the sparks. “Under my roof, you’ll have standing as a brother. Be sure, if my family has any resource to give, you won’t end your days in foreign exile.”

  Had the child been younger, even by two years, a grown man could have extended his arm and gathered that awkward, stiff form into an embrace for comfort. But hardship had imposed too early a maturity. The boy stepped woodenly forward and offered his wrist for the clasp to seal a pact between adults.

  Mearn blinked. He hoped the scalding blur to his sight was solely due to his fever. With his jaw clenched hard against any words that might unmask the pity that tore him, he pretended the wrists he accepted were not cold, or drawn taut with fear and uncertainty.

  “Don’t you mind, boy,” he said in dry humor. “We’re in poor state together. If I’m not mistaken, our first act must be to beg help from these fenlanders to thread a safe path through the mires. Then we might need to pilfer a post horse to make our way back to Avenor. We’ll need to go swiftly.” One corner of his mouth crawled up in fierce irony as he remembered the gold and the compromised straits of his house servant, still embroiled in the ruse concerning several sly doxies. Their extended service to cover his absence by now must have seeded a staggering collection of wild rumors. “If I’m going to look peaked, it’s all in good form. A man who’s been worn to his bones by three women over the course of a fortnight would be nothing else except prostrate. Do you bet?”

  A tentative nod. The boy’s fingers stopped trembling a fraction.

  “That’s good,” Mearn assured, and lightened his touch. “We’ll get along fine. I’ll stand you five silvers for the bone buttons on your boot cuff that when my brother the duke learns about my randy reputation, he’ll send sealed word by fast courier. He’ll say that my dallying is shameful, and for clan’s sake, the time’s come to marry.”

  By then. Lord Maenol’s bitter note of appeal lay in immolated bits on the floor. The fenwife bustled over, indignant, and poured water over the ashes.

  “I could have used that to drink, pretty mistress,” Mearn said in reflexive protest. He released his steadying hold on the boy, grabbed the empty bucket, and tucked it into Ianfar’s stilted grasp. “Go, man,” he urged. “Refill this for the lady, and take as long as you like.”

  The release came no moment too soon. Run to the end of his flagging strength, Ianfar bolted outdoors to unburden his anguish in private.

  Left to the breathless scolding of his benefactress, Mearn shut his eyes against branding pain and the flame of a burgeoning headache. When the fenwife understood he was not going to argue, he managed a beautifully worded apology that sapped the very last of his reserves. Before the maw of oblivion claimed him, he made a vow with the unyielding endurance of black iron. Once back in Avenor, when Ianfar was delivered into absolute safety, he would seek out the name of the man who had betrayed Arithon’s faith and precipitated the premature flight out of Riverton. For Lord Maenol’s losses, and for the clans’ forced abdication of their age-long stewardship of a kingdom, that one would suffer the harsh edge of s’Brydion justice until Dharkaron Avenger himself interceded to ask human mercy.

  Three Moments

  Early Spring 5653

  In a tavern along the road south of Middlecross, a middle-age
d minstrel clad in scarlet sits down and tunes his lyranthe for his night’s round of performance; and his accustomed audience of tradesmen and farmhands is swelled by a half company of crown soldiers under command of another man, whose nondescript mantle covers the sunwheel blazon of authority, and who hears through each ballad with mounting suspicion and a frown of incensed disapproval…

  A fortnight following Arithon’s clean escape out of Riverton, his imprisoned accomplices are boarded into the holds of the three brigs newly commissioned; while the appointed royal captains call orders to make sail, Cattrick stands at the trestle in his loft, a sharpened shim of graphite clenched in his fist, and his heart lit with rage fit to murder…

  On the same day, Mearn s’Brydion returns to Avenor, Ianfar s’Gannley alongside him; and the first gossip he hears as he hands off his blown livery horse is the word of Princess Talith’s fatal plunge from a high tower battlement, named by the shocked and mourning court as a suicide caused by despair…

  X. Pursuit

  Spring 5653

  The three brigs newly commissioned under Lysaer’s sunwheel banner raised anchor to a windward tide. Before the rip grew too stiff to ride for advantage, the pert little fleet raised stainless, fresh sails and began its mincing, piloted run down the estuary to ply open waters to Corith.

  Confined in the narrow gloom of the mate’s cabin, and crammed head and feet in a hammock ill suited to the frame and muscle of a man given lifetime service as a war captain, Caolle listened to the tense strings of orders which maneuvered the flag vessel, Lance of Justice, through her intricate, bending course down the narrows. Since his complaint that the fumes of fresh varnish turned his head, the door to his quarters was latched back and open. His ankles by then were already chained to forestall him trying escape. By the free air through the quarterdeck hatch grating, and the brackish miasma of the salt bogs, he mapped the layered headlands of a shoreline he could not see.

  Moment to moment, Caolle rode his taxed senses. However his wound ached, he asked for no posset. Too easily, the reins of clear consciousness might slip his grasp and spin him back into circling delirium. The Koriani healer meant him well, but her remedies gave him sleep that brought nightmares, and no peace of mind when he woke.

  Like a crippled, old dog, he felt he had outlived his usefulness. The enchantresses’ meddling fed his unease, tick tight as they were with Lysaer s’Ilessid’s Alliance. Dread fanned that anxiety, that his part in his liege lord’s flight out of Riverton might become their best tool to clinch Prince Arithon’s downfall.

  Now the brig was under way, ostensibly to reinforce the s’llessid assault on the outpost at the Isles of Min Pierens.

  Caolle was not resigned. Discomfited by the roll of rough passage as her crew worked ship in the tideway, he traded straight pain for awareness. The hammock swung and creaked from its rings as the vessel slipped astream of the ebb. Canvas cracked overhead, square sails caught aback, and steering cables hissed as the quartermaster spun the helm hard alee to swing her stern down the channel. Terse orders volleyed through the rocking lag of the stay, as drift bore the vessel past the sandy tongue of a spit. Then the shivering bang from aloft as her yards braced full to the wind; new foam dashed off the rudder. The brig regained way and sailed close-hauled down the neck of the Riverton Narrows.

  Caolle’s hammock rocked to the heel of the deck. He clamped his teeth and stifled the oaths that would draw unwanted attention. The straits of his captivity were worse than demeaning. The least cramp in his limbs could not be eased without begging outside help. His weakness was not deemed a reliable jailer: the festered wounds on his forearms were poulticed, dressed wrist to elbow in bandages which also served as restraint. Immobility left him more time than he could use without fretting.

  Abovedecks, the leadsman called off the mark. The captain barked for a two-point change in course.

  “Smarten up on those braces!” howled the mate to some laggards. “Are ye blue-water hands, or a pack o’ coast-hugging galleymen?”

  The lookout sang out and the lead line confirmed shoaling water. Other crewmen stationed at the port cathead let go the ring painter. The cockbilled anchor splashed to windward to a rattling fall of cable. While the bow was stayed through the tug of an eddy, Caolle pitched his forest-sharp senses to take fullest stock of his surroundings.

  By now, he judged the ship’s company included twenty-five combat-trained guardsmen. Half of these sprawled idle, polishing mail, or shooting dice for small coin in the galley. Their less seaworthy fellows shared the rail on the main deck, unmercifully rousted hither and yon by rushed seamen as the brig wore again, and the lee side changed port to starboard. Two dozen more sailhands berthed forward as crew, each one vouchsafed by merchant references or a paper with a justiciar’s seal to affirm lawful background from a city of lifelong residence.

  Others on board, Caolle recalled from the Laughing Captain’s taproom. These included the brig’s handpicked officers, a captain, two mates, a grizzled and temperamental quartermaster, and the serving-class appointments of cook, purser, and cabin steward. At large also was a street brat, caught stowing away, and pressed into crown service as ship’s boy. His vociferous, guttersnipe insolence came and went through the companionway as he fetched and carried for the Koriani First Senior.

  Since spells and scryings wrought through quartz-crystal resonance could not be made to span open salt water, Lirenda and the healer, brought along to tend Caolle, made passage on the same vessel. They shared the captain’s quarters in the stern cabin, while the displaced officers occupied the chart room a scant breadth of a bulkhead away.

  More orders sang out, and the brig hauled her wind; the changed quarter of the breeze wafted the smell of fish stew from the galley, mingled with soldier’s oaths and the cook’s nasal carping. By the bite of his temper and a doleful emphasis on assignment of unfair duties, Caolle learned that seventy-two of Arithon’s accomplices, exposed by Koriani conjury languished, chained, in the brig’s hold as well. By default, the two vessels trailing the flagship must bear the Etarran fighting companies imported to defeat the Shadow Master at Corith.

  A war captain’s instinct died hard, to know the strength and position of his enemies.

  Caolle closed his eyes. From habit, he reconstructed the mate’s cabin in detail from memory. On his right hand, a hanging locker leaked a tanner’s tang of new oilskins; then a stand and basin, rowed with latched hooks holding buckets of drawn seawater and a mesh bag with lye soap for washing. To his left lay the mate’s berth, and a small niche for an officer’s sea chest, with a brass lantern mounted in gimbals overhead, swinging unlit to the toss of the hull. Caolle gave no ground to discomfort. He quizzed his recall until he knew he could find his way without mishap, even in total darkness. Then he catnapped as he could, restive with distrust and the incessant throb of bound wounds.

  For a while, the rush and slap of rip currents in the estuary kept time to his uneasy dreams. He drowsed and woke and drowsed again. When sunset faded into silver-gray dusk, the vessel cleared the last shoals at the mouth of the inlet. The commotion as she raised topsails, then the change to the long, swinging roll of fresh sea swells sharpened Caolle back to full consciousness.

  Flaring light jinked through a seam in the bulkhead as the cabin steward kindled the lantern in the chart room adjacent. A discussion in progress resumed on the heels of his departure. Through the staid clump of the captain’s seaboots, a woman’s soprano raised a snag which burgeoned into rife argument. The captain’s bitten authority clashed into female rejoinder.

  “We will not lay our course for the Isles of Min Pierens,” Lirenda contradicted, chill as new ice on a freshet. “That was sheer presumption on your part since, in fact, our quarry will not sail there either.”

  The first mate’s gruff bass backed his captain’s disagreement, whelmed into thundering canvas as crewmen aloft shook out the reefs in the mainsail.

  Then Koriani reply, in dictatorial steel. “No. By n
o means. Not only has the future been scried for full surety, but we have deliberately allowed Arithon s’Ffalenn to hear warning of Prince Lysaer’s plans.” In clipped, sulky venom, the First Senior qualified. “The Shadow Master knows an Alliance blockade will close over him if he sails to Corith. We’ve foreseen his reaction. He’ll flee south for Torwent. Sealed forecast has already shown us the cove where he’ll reclaim his sloop and embark. His point of vulnerability lies in the estuary at the head of Mainmere Bay. If our spellcraft restrains his shadows, your three ships plying the mouth of the inlet can pin him down as he bolts for open water.”

  “That’s a coast run,” cracked the captain, tired and brittle from the long, fussy hours of seamanship required to run the Riverton Narrows. “You’d have been better off to charter a galleyman who hauls cargo through Tideport and Mainmere.”

  “You’re afraid?” Lirenda’s derisive accusation chilled Caolle to ugly foreboding. “I’m surprised. Three ships with armed companies against a pleasure sloop crewed by one man and a bumbling, fat drunk would seem an auspicious engagement.”

  The captain’s slow-strided pacing stopped short. “Do you take me for a fool? You speak of the shadow-bending sorcerer who caused the trade fleet to burn at Minderl Bay.”

  “Against whom you’ve the backing of the Koriani Prime Matriarch. Gainsay her will, and you also betray the Alliance of Light for refusing your help to corner the Spinner of Darkness.” Lirenda cut off debate with aristocratic dismissal. “Do fetch out your charts, captain. Our course is a foregone conclusion. The trap which my order has set will be sprung, the fate of your enemy is already destined and sealed through multiple wards of grand augury.”

  Distressed to alarm in the salt-muggy confines of the mate’s cabin, Caolle heard the captain expend his last argument. “I don’t like your odds, witch. This felon commands the very fabric of darkness. No mortal fighting company can close on a prize they can’t see. Nor can my quartermaster steer clear of the reefs if he’s reft blind on lee shores in an inlet!”