Fugitive Prince

by Janny Wurts

  XIII. Reversals

  Summer 5653

  Lirenda’s meeting with Prince Lysaer was not to take place in the warmed comfort of a state galley’s cabin, but ashore, on the open cliff top. The same shattered ring of First Age foundations had sheltered the Shadow Master’s sailhands before his unfruitful voyage to Kathtairr. No trace remained now of that habitancy. Six years of winter storms had scoured off the ashes of the cooking fires. The bones of fish and hunted game tossed onto their midden were long since cleared off by scavengers. Even the sail canvas Dakar had used to roof the shell of the sole standing watchkeep had rotted, the frayed threads picked away by industrious kittiwakes to line their nests in the rocks.

  Set ashore by her escort of officers, First Senior Lirenda had been left to manage the ascent by herself. On that hour, the low-flying storm scud wore the gloom of a premature dusk. The gusts which lashed and moaned through bent cedars, in these heights shrilled across barren stone. Lirenda’s light mantle flailed and snapped at the hem. Each blast assaulted her layers of silk robes, as if the elements conspired to strip her naked. Her pinned coils of jet hair succumbed as well, first torn from confinement, then flogged into tangles like whipped ink against the flushed pink of her cheeks. The dark, congested clouds overhead streamed like frothed smoke in a vat, chased by intermittent thunder.

  Raised in cosseted wealth, accustomed ever since to the mannered regime of Koriani sisterhouses, Lirenda held no love for wild heights. She minced over stones too rough for kid soles, and battled to keep the proud, erect grace of her carriage. Stressed to primal nerves by the oncoming gale, she chewed her lip, while the discharge of far off lightning glazed mercury over the upthrust tangs of sharp rock. She could imagine no motive for Prince Lysaer to insist on holding an audience in the midst of a ruined fortress.

  Logic spurred on her intuitive unease. The setting was all wrong. Based on the observations drawn from years of Koriani lane watch, the indulgence of demeaning gestures matched nothing of Lysaer’s ruling style.

  Denied her reflexive access to power, Lirenda felt her nerves the more keenly as she swept the barren summit in search of a sheltering pavilion. No such royal trapping met her eye. Just the wind-fluted rims of tumbled-down walls in the poured tones of rust, lead, and ink. Stone here had been witness to violent death, and under bruised cloud, the sorrows of antiquity seemed to cry out for the voice of a bard to waken their brooding memory. When the fortress at Corith had stood in defense, the site had been burned desolate by drakefire. Abandoned to wreckage, even the tenacious island cedars could not pry a stunted foothold to take seed. Too late, Lirenda considered the pitfalls. The Prince of the Light had ever been wont to wrest full advantage from the lofty affectations of court ceremony. His character did not incline toward brooding. Never before this had he been a man to choose a glowering, windswept terrain to conduct his crown business of state.

  She saw him at last, against every precedent unattended where he stood against a backdrop of gale-ravaged sky. His elegant silk doublet leaped out like the sheen of found pearl amid the stripped blocks of a rampart’s foundations.

  A gust screamed. Lirenda wrestled the billowing tug of her mantle, then snagged its purple folds in a death grip to keep it from flagging like a sail. If she wished to turn back, the moment was forfeit. Prince Lysaer turned his head and caught sight of her.

  No option remained but to close the last yards over treacherous, uneven footing.

  Lirenda’s fluttery uneasiness could not be dismissed in brash pretense. Koriani life was communal. Those rare occasions she had spent in male company afforded untrustworthy insight. No man within her living memory had owned the presence of this prince, daunting and polished to flawless grace as he inclined his head and acknowledged

  her arrival. He offered his hand to steady her last step, his grasp firm and warm around her cool fingers, and his hair like snagged gold against the jeweled edge of his collar.

  “Come,” he greeted in unsmiling courtesy. “I invited you here to share the spectacular view.”

  Three steps down a defile, one sharp turn to the right; the abrupt cessation of the wind all but rocked Lirenda off-balance. Lysaer’s sure strength caught her back from a stumble. He steered her downward into the niche where the ancient foundation arched over a gully in the cliffside. They halted in that isolate pocket of hushed air, while the gusts shrieked on unabated up above, and balked eddies careened through the defile, shearing through spindly stands of racked trees and harrying their branches like weed stalks. Far beneath, the strand met the sea in stepped ledges, a jumbled bulwark of silt gravel and boulders where the raging surf hurled itself ragged.

  The gale was still building. Already the bay wore the loomed stripes of spindrift, where wind sluiced the tops from the wavecrests.

  On the pending edge of twilight, the beaten stretch of shoreline tugged the heart with its pristine splendor. Time could be felt here, the mighty deeds of bygone ages compressed against the present like a telescoped view through a jewel facet. Lirenda gripped her thin silks, diminished by awe, and eroded by the demeaning recognition that her life span mattered to the earth not at all. She gave way to a contradictory relief, that she did not wear her crystal in this place. Had her quartz been in hand, its channels would be quickened. The past might have burst forth and shaken her with the vast, deep tones of the horns that centaurs once used to call dragons.

  “You may sit,” Lysaer said, breaking through her inadvertent absence of mind. In seamless, reserved grace, he handed her onto a fallen slab of coping.

  She would not cast off pride. Rather than decry her spell-blinded straits, she bent her cool gaze to wring the uttermost from her Koriani arts of observation. “In my sisterhouse, it would be I granting you that permission.”

  Lysaer smiled, his candor a weapon’s cleared edge. “This site adheres to its own grand sovereignty, except for the Shadow Master’s meddling.”

  “We need not stand upon dignity for that.” Lirenda gathered the spilled folds of her mantle and made space for him on the stone.

  He chose to stay standing. She scrutinized his poise, unblinking and still as a snake that sized up choice prey. Lysaer met her regard without qualm, a feat few men dared to sustain beyond the brute span of a moment. The bedrock calm that lent this prince majesty was in fact the intent of a spirit schooled into a seamless, listening patience. Whatever she did or said in his presence would be heard without personal prejudice. No judgment would be passed until their exchange had been weighed in its entirety.

  That striking attentiveness, paired with the grave impact of male beauty, lent the man his stunning charisma. Lirenda searched his clean features for the fine, marring evidence of selfishness, and found no line in the flesh out of harmony with its framework of bone. He was all substance and firm moral courage. His skin wore its youth like an oak tree’s new leaves, and yet, he was not young. Lirenda tried to imagine him as a boy with scraped knees and tousled hair; and failed utterly.

  Even here, where the elements lent no man contrived artifice, Lysaer’s natural bearing bespoke inborn royalty stamped all the way to the marrow.

  Made aware through her own armor of deportment that she and this prince shared more similarities than differences, Lirenda gave rein to her impulse. “If you could have chosen the course of your life, would you be here today?”

  Lysaer did not lift his regard from her, nor did the scoured, limpid blue of his eyes once deviate from directness. “I was born a king’s heir. I know nothing else.”

  But his hands gave the lie, unrelaxed against the foil thread of his hose. Lirenda sensed a glass edge to his poise, as though he had made his first stance on the cliff top in challenge, daring the gale to rise up and smash his works into oblivion.

  Lirenda said, “This seems an odd site for a king’s heir to hold audience. What made you come here?”

  “I needed solitude in which I could be myself.” His answer yielded no shred of shared trust as he settled his shou
lder to the rocks. “However, even here we are not alone. Our ties of responsibility still bind us. Can you see them?”

  The seed pearls on his sleeve pocked the gloom as he pointed toward the carnelian gleam where the Lance’s stern lantern bobbed amid saw-toothed wavecrests.

  Lirenda maintained her tight survey of his face. “Do you speak of the hostages who are offered in exchange for the clan slaves kept chained on your galleys? You could bend to demand. Or do you believe the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s allies drive too high-handed a bargain?”

  “A prince must give way to no man. His guide must be the principled tenets demanded by justice and mercy.” Yet new lines crimped the corners of Lysaer’s eyes. A fractional tautness to his jaw exposed his fleeting, raw edge of discomfort.

  Some recent event still caused him an intense and personal anguish. A thrill piqued Lirenda’s interest, that Koriani arts might allow her a glimpse of his most private core.

  “The common subjects of the realm must receive the same law as others born to wealth and position,” Lysaer qualified. “My will is not at issue, lady enchantress, now or at any time. Today, I must pass sentence on men who failed in their orders. Tomorrow, for the weal of the realm, I may have to sign an execution for treason against the woman I took to wife.”

  There lay the hidden vulnerability, a raw nerve betrayed in the trembling flash of his jewels. In Princess Talith lay the source of the agony Lysaer lacked human outlet to express. “You loved her,” Lirenda accused, aware through his front of equanimity that the confidence she probed for was unlikely to be shared with anyone.

  The temper of his voice came back like sheared metal. “The Shadow Master knew. He sought to use her to ruin me.”

  Lirenda studied Lysaer’s shuttered features, the pain embedded so deeply that not even tears might flow; a wounding as bloodless as the blued tang of steel broken off inside vulnerable flesh. If this was how love could mangle free choice, she was all the more determined to keep her own spirit unencumbered. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “Did you not guess?” Rings and gold braid sparked to a faint play of lightning. “This is a trial, your hearing, for my impartial royal judgment, since the Lance has not delivered the Master of Shadow in chains. Your order’s part was to drive my enemy to flight out of Riverton. I want to know how he chanced to gain warning of my trap set and waiting here at Corith.”

  Lirenda all but shot to her feet in stunned shock. Barely in time, her reflexive poise slapped back the impulse and saved her. She pulled in a chain of deep breaths.

  Lysaer watched, his eyes on her impartial as sky-printed water.

  Relief surged over her like a shot pail of ice as she recouped bludgeoned wits and reminded herself he was not yet aligned in decision against her. The Prince waited, prepared to hear her explanation, the only ruffled part of him now the gilt hair left snarled by the wind.

  “You must understand,” he pressed, gentle as though he mistook her silence for reluctance to name a guilty party. “No inquest could be made in the presence of the men-at-arms who serve with my fleet. Each has lost brothers and loved ones in the war against the true dark. For the fact that Arithon s’Ffalenn slipped the net, they would respond like a dog pack. Unveil a conspirator, and they’ll cry for fresh blood until a death has righted the balance.”

  Some sly fact stayed unsaid. Lirenda caught the shrewd set to his stillness, alongside the unpleasant insight that more than royal judgment would be passed in this unwitnessed hearing. Like his half brother, Lysaer s’llessid bore the royal gifts of s’Ahelas on the distaff side of his pedigree. However he pronounced sentence for the misplay at Riverton, his indictment would bear a calculated stake in the future. While the night deepened, and the storm broke in turbulent force against the headlands, she realized that Koriani observers too often neglected to allow for the mother’s inherited farsight.

  “The wise man knows the master always outlives his hounds,” Lirenda threw back in provocation.

  “Only one opportunity has been lost to take down the Spinner of Darkness,” Lysaer s’Ilessid allowed. “We agree, that’s no cause to indulge in the hysteria of disappointment.”

  Against five centuries’ longevity, the event lost its impact. The Prince of the Light would not trifle with recriminations. He would instead reshape this setback in deliberate calculation to steer later events to his purpose. Lirenda’s suspicion bloomed into swift anger. Morriel Prime would be mortified to learn any Koriani Senior had strayed inside the reach of such usage.

  “Is this royal prerogative?” Lirenda provoked. “Are we not to brand your conspirator in public?”

  Lysaer withheld response; and the fear shot cold through her, since she had no way to fathom how much he knew, or how much he relied upon guesswork, concerning the reverses brought on by her meddler’s choice to prolong Caolle’s survival.

  Across gale-torn waters and thickening gloom, the firefly dance of the ship’s lantern mocked her. She found herself mortal and exposed in this crux as the Lance’s miserable, deposed captain. The gutted pride of her First Senior’s rank made her loath to cross moral wits with the man hailed as Prince of the Light.

  This moment’s freight of uncertainty became as grueling a punishment as the loss of her link to prime power. Against masterful statecraft, Lirenda had no true shield, but only bare wits and a scathing self-contempt.

  At length, without censure, Lysaer gave his answer. “There can be no conspiracy. The orders you follow are not yours, but your Prime’s.”

  The multiple snares of innuendo bit deep. “Must you insist on attaching blame?” Cornered behind her last shred of confidence, Lirenda fell back upon pretense. “If so, you have no guilty party, but only a poor choice of scapegoats. No man broke your faith. For reasons of mercy, my order spared a liegeman of Arithon’s. Caolle’s wounding was mortal. At the end of his strength, no one foresaw he might become the weapon to turn in the hand and wrest the Shadow Master’s capture off course.”

  “Caolle, who once served as war captain to Steiven s’Valerient, and later, to the heir, Jieret Red-beard? My lowliest Etarran foot soldier would have weighed that man’s character with better prudence.” Dangerous now as struck flame, Lysaer faced the sea. A sudden, sheeting flare of lightning scoured his profile to the ennoblized stamp on a coinface. “Such a man could never be harmless until he lay dead.” He waited again in sly pressure, prepared to let silence condemn her.

  Lirenda would not stoop to volunteering the Koriani role behind the question he posed by implication.

  Lysaer raised his eyebrows in acidic irony. “Weren’t you planning to importune me about hostages? Or does the Lance not sail under a barbarian crew, with my sworn company of Etarrans held locked in her hold as their captives?”

  “Is that an issue?” For surely he had noticed: the inbound storm stripped the night’s secrets. For minutes on end, Lirenda had marked the ongoing flurry of activity around the hull of the anchored Lance. Another bolt of lightning rinsed the ocean dull pewter. From the cliff top, wrapped in the scent of gathering rain, one could make out the busy flotilla of oared boats bearing fugitives off the moored ship. As she watched, the leading party made a sheltered landing in a cove notched into an offshore islet.

  “Of course,” Lysaer said, “we came for the view, since the script is too obvious. My men-at-arms and original sailhands are still imprisoned on board the flagship. Since they’d not be left free, the crew in the boats are undoubtedly Arithon’s, leaving. They work for a pirate. What would they expect except shiftless treachery, no matter whose word should be asked as surety for their safety? Dogs forced to skulk know well when to cringe. As my father learned in Amroth, to his everlasting sorrow, there is no dealing with s’Ffalenn hirelings through any honorable exchange.”

  Lirenda uncrimped her hands from balled silk, displeased to find herself sweating. “Why make them a display for my benefit, then?”

  Lysaer gave her his complacent survey, as if he might memorize the pr
ecise pattern of loose hair trailed across her domed forehead, or set a mold to the secretive slant of her eyelids. “For my own men, naturally, there can be no choice. And I asked you here to bear witness.”

  Full night had fallen. Beyond the white crash of breakers on the headland, the dark between forks of lightning became a wind-textured veil of black air, pinpricked in distance by the solitary flame of the abandoned flagship’s stern lamp. Lysaer in his doublet of milk satin and worked pearl seemed no ordinary man, but an avatar sent down to earth in a form wrought of silvery light. Lirenda saw him turn from her, his expression resolved into a stern serenity she found terrifying for its perfect absence of uncertainty. Then he raised his right arm.

  She foresaw his intent a heartbeat too late.

  “Mercy on them, you can’t!” Her cry entangled with a tortured shriek as his raised gift of light slammed land and sky into recoil.

  Thunder fit to crack rock shook the ruins. This was no discharge brewed by natural forces and clean storm, but the retort of lethal fury unleashed as an act of vengeful judgment. Heat sheared in backlash. The fresh-whetted tang of ozone rode the air as the bolt arced down to meet the sea and its defenseless target: the fragile, wood-chip frailty of the ship which swung unsuspecting at her anchorage.

  Deafened, dazed half-blind, Lirenda reeled backward against crumbled stone. She saw the point of impact as a blooming, orange star. Timbers and furled canvas and cordage ignited, and with them, Tysan’s entrapped subjects exploded amid a horrific maelstrom of fire and debris.

  Then all light extinguished. The pealing echoes of spent force quaked the hills and slapped the ground, while the gusts dispersed clotted streamers of flame. Wreckage and cinders settled and snuffed out amid a scrim of storm-racked waves.