Fugitive Prince

by Janny Wurts

  “This is a dream,” Arithon whispered, the spirit leached from his words, and the fight in him flattened to a whisper.

  “No.” Jieret held him, his unvanquished courage enough to cause pain, and his grasp unrelenting with the promise of the bittersweet dichotomy of life. “Everything’s real! If you run now, prince, you’ll never see the fruits you spent yourself penniless to reap.”

  Steam billowed. Traithe splashed more water on the rocks, which showed scabrous gray patches from cooling. The stifling darkness spun time into fluidity, while the herb-scented heat rose in waves and eroded all barriers between mind and emotion. Jieret waited. Each breath in his chest flamed new agony. The stillness in the body held clasped in his arms became harrowing, and despair crushed out hope like the immovable wall of a glacier. He understood too well: this was the crux point, the fragility of moment when victory or defeat hung in the balance, awaiting the flick of fate’s finger.

  Ever the swordsman, taught to fight for as long as his hand held one weapon, Jieret Red-beard launched his last, stabbing thrust. “Caolle left you a legacy in the form of a Koriani witch’s spelled quartz.”

  At Traithe’s start of astonishment, the clan chieftain laughed, broken free like snapped wire from the unmerciful, cranked pressure of strain. “Yes, it’s true.”

  Another racked moment; then Arithon’s frame began to shake, first in small jerks, and then in running tremors that caused Jieret a spurt of stark panic. He shoved to his knees, dragging Arithon half-upright. His lungs filled to howl for a loss he had no fiber left in him to withstand.

  But Traithe touched him still.

  The s’Ffalenn prince was laughing in jagged, hysterical spasms. “A spell crystal?” Arithon ground on through a shrieked, wheezing breath. “Morriel must be spitting like a goosed cat. Whose is it?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Jieret promised, stunned stupid by relief. Somehow he found the aplomb to sort language. “But not until you have eaten and rested. You’re so worn right now, the irony would kill you, which was not what Caolle intended.”

  Lapsed back into quiet by weakness that skirted the brink of collapse, Arithon turned his head into Jieret’s strong shoulder. “Caolle was a rabid fox, and you are more devious than that fiend of a father who sired you. I will do as you ask, just to share in the joke. Now you have my word, can we please let in some fresh air?”

  But Traithe had already anticipated. Dakar pulled the muffling cloth free from outside, and light streamed in on an inrush of cool breeze that started Jieret shivering. While hands reached to assist, he turned his glad strength to pull Arithon out into daylight. Before they could bundle his spent limbs in the drover’s cloak, his prince drifted into a faint.

  “Don’t worry,” Traithe said, his face all wry delight as he peeled the soaked hair from his neck. “He’ll revive fast enough when we douse him clean in the stream. The scout has stew waiting, and sleep without dreams will do much to mend lost resilience.”

  “Oh, Ath,” groaned Jieret. He stood up, wobbly at the knees with Arithon’s wrapped weight in his arms. “That’s if we survive the spate of raw language. The one thing this prince hates like fire is being handled like an invalid.”

  “Well, that will just provide more incentive.” Traithe’s grin was pure mischief. “If he wants us to stop, he’ll just have to rebuild his strength.”

  In fact, Arithon succumbed before they had extracted him from the rock pool. Dried and swathed in the drover’s cloak, he slept without moving throughout the late afternoon. As evening fell, he roused long enough to taste the stewed venison shared out in the bowls Traithe kept at hand for his spellcrafting. Twice, Jieret’s reflexes righted the container that slipped from his liege’s slack fingers. No scalding invective marked either incident. When Arithon slipped off into sleep once again, Traithe scribed a healing glyph over his forehead and snapped for Earl Jieret to stop pacing.

  “Worry serves nothing. What we’re seeing is nervous exhaustion.” Like echo, he fielded a sleepy croak from the raven, gone to roost to the night chorus of frogs in the marsh. “I know, little brother, you, too,” he agreed in tart sympathy. Then, to Jieret, who hovered uncertain with his hands whitely clenched to the tang of his broadsword, he added, “Keep watch. If I’m right, your liege will rouse in the darkest hours before dawn. He’ll want to talk, and share the need for understanding companionship.”

  Settled to keep watch, while the studded patterns of summer constellations wheeled through the gaps in the oak leaves, Jieret oiled his knife sheaths. He compared stories with the scout, then helped to tie new fletching onto worn arrows. While Dakar dirtied his hands scraping the deer pelt, Felirin tested his new art of storytelling, until midnight saw all but the Sorcerer settled to rest.

  “I haven’t apologized, or thanked you properly for your help,” Jieret said, his hands empty at last and folded against the stained leather of his baldric. “You’ve helped to restore a number of great gifts, among them the heart of my people. Like these scouts of Maenol’s, we could see a harsh future as long as the Alliance keeps building. The headhunter campaigns from Etarra take their toll, but we can face anything, hopeful.”

  Traithe lifted his hat and raked back loose hair, the scar at his crown a jagged dark knot that belied his mild stance in the darkness. “The world will spin differently, because of tonight. All things are connected, as Arithon knows, since he was raised to think like a sorcerer. He still tries to honor his grandfather’s teaching. That’s why his failures strike hardest. You did well in your handling. Few could have made him attentive after the sorrows that took place at Riverton.”

  “He is as my brother, more than my liege,” Jieret admitted, then blushed for a feeling he had never dared mention.

  Traithe arose, tactful, to leave him in privacy for the hour when his prince must stir out of dreams and ask for account of Caolle’s dying. The ending was two-edged, that the stay of victory for Tysan’s clansmen had been won with no chance for a last word exchanged in reconciliation or parting.

  Arithon’s branding memory would still be of the sword thrust that had felled the friend who had righted the damage the Koriathain had set in his design.

  “He will live with the gifts,” Earl Jieret promised. “Though I swear I’d fret less if I had to bash the wind out of him, making the point stick with my fists.”

  The Sorcerer laughed. “You wear Caolle’s stamp alongside of your father’s. He will live on, for all that.” Traithe gathered his satchel and snapped crippled fingers for his raven, which glided down from its roost in the treetops. It alighted, feathers folded like knives as it croaked testy inquiry from the threadbare perch of his shoulder.

  “Fare you well, Earl Jieret. Wish your prince my regards.” Then in short, limping steps, the Sorcerer turned away, to be far from Mainmere by morning.

  Left alone with his thoughts, Earl Jieret listened, while the night celebrated its chorus of crickets and sheltered the rustles of foraging mice. The forest breathed life. Water and wind braided together in counterpoint. The agile bats swooped like manic shuttles, weaving their unseen strands on the loom of creation. Oddly content that his fresh loss of Caolle could be shared, he almost missed the first stir of movement as Arithon roused in the drover’s cloak.

  The first words came spare with the acerbic, dry wit he remembered. “You’ve got me tied like an infant in swaddling. Damned lucky I don’t have a killing need to piss.”

  Jieret settled back against the bole of an oak, his fringed buckskins blurring his angular form in the darkness. “If you did, we’d make wagers on how long you would take to fall sound asleep with your breeks down.”

  Arithon snorted. His hands moved, restored to a semblance of dexterity as he freed the tucked cloak and flexed his constricted shoulders. Painfully gaunt, he paused to examine the shirt someone had given to cover his nakedness. “Make sure you say which scout I should thank.”

  “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.

  “So whose spell crystal have I inherited as my legacy?” Arithon asked at due length.

  “You couldn’t guess?” Earl Jieret reached into the loosened breast of 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 of 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 countenance showed no breaking sign. He seemed queerly grieved, head tilted a listening angle to one side, while the chain magnified the running 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 instrument 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 unfettered, 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 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.

  Catalyst

  Summer 5653

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

  For one second, two, the sweeping immediate, razor-edged memory held her fast across the transition. Still, she could hear the rippling, 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 compassion, then the pang of regret that was hers, inflicted as the harmony tangled and dispelled, she could surmise the hand of the meddler.

  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 circling 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 gauzethin 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 garner 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 brought smells of smoke and fish grease from the shoreside cookfires, 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 transport.

  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 rippled 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.