by Janny Wurts
His prince let him take her, a shocking concern.
'Inside with her. Quickly. I'll tell Glendien which simples I need on the way to our chamber.' Now wretchedly shivering, Arithon snatched his Paravian sword and lyranthe from the coach seat as he stepped out 'Bed down in the still-room, it's warmer,' he told Sidir, who seemed steadier.
The tall Companion unfolded his cloaked frame from the carriage, renewed humour alight in his eyes. 'I expect that you want your privacy, liege?'
'Damn well he won't have it!' the Mad Prophet rebutted, and elbowed his way to the forefront. Like a sack of loose stone lofted out of a catapult, he shot after the crown prince's heels.
So brief a snatched rest should not have permitted the speed which saw Arithon over the plank-bridge, to the tower's entry. As Dakar pounded after, prince and Shandian liegeman ducked inside, rounding the cot where Fionn Areth sprawled, loudly snoring amid crumpled blankets. Now forced to give chase at a lumbering sprint, Dakar puffed on, livid, and wheezed his objections while climbing the stair. 'Your Grace! You ought not... to be . . . alone ... in recovery. What if . . . you fall asleep? Or succumb ... to the fever . . . you've earned . . . from your state ... of over-extension?' The first landing flashed past. 'Damn all to Dharkaron! Arithon! Will you hear sense?'
Dakar caught up by the lit door to the still-room, where Arithon languished, one arm braced to the jamb. Glendien was receiving his rapid instructions, while Kyrialt bore Elaira ahead to the empty bedchamber above.
Dakar mopped his soaked face. Swore through hitched breaths in brothel vernacular, as he moved to block Arithon's path.
'I won't have you as nurse-maid,' Rathain's crown prince attacked. 'In fact, I'll have no one's intrusion at all.'
'Your permissions,' Dakar threatened, pink fingers clutched to the doorframe in hopes of a bulwark.
He was shoved aside.
'Revoked!' Arithon reeled past, dodging through the burdened work trestles with their crocks of salts and herbs, then the looming gleam of the still, the covered baskets, and glass mortar and pestle. He needed both hands to keep his wracked balance.
'Blood oaths are not malleable,' Dakar snarled back. The one sworn at Athir still binds you!'
'Then guard the door!' Arithon commanded, regardless. 'We shall do well enough. You're not my keeper! And more than one method can heal the surge of overload that afflicts us.'
Dakar flushed beet red. 'You don't dare!' Yet stunned eyesight confirmed the outrageous suspicion by noting which remedies Glendien bundled. 'Arithon! You randy fool!'
His shout earned the clanswoman's laughter. 'And you're not the black pot berating the kettle?' she gibed in her warm, southcoast accent
Dakar ignored her. Lashed white by fresh panic, he launched his stout frame through the clutter of the herbalist's paraphernalia. Jostled Glendien sideways, as his frantic rush broached the darkened spiral of the upper stairwell.
'Did you learn nothing by your past failure in Halwythwood?' he cried in desperate appeal. 'Arithon, please! You have everything to lose, if you pursue this with your faculties compromised!'
Still, nobody listened.
Panting fit to drop, the Mad Prophet reached the threshold above, just as Kyrialt straightened from laying Elaira down on the feather-bed by the casement. The sheets were remade, surely Glendien's work, done with forethought since Fianzia's departure.
One lamp burned low. By that febrile light, Arithon shed his sword, then unwrapped his lyranthe. His chipped-quartz expression left no further doubt: he was set upon claiming his place at his enchantress's side straightaway.
'I can't let you try this.' Dakar bulled forward, only to wince as a crippling grip latched his forearm.
'You will not stay to watch! No matter the cause.' Arithon's clamped fingers steered the spellbinder backwards, then spun him around and thrust his resistant bulk back outside. This hour is mine!'
Beyond all persuasion, the Prince of Rathain dismissed Kyrialt. Then he kicked the door shut upon Dakar's appalled protests and sealed the latch with a binding that showered white sparks.
'Don't!' Dakar yelped, as the rebuffed liegeman surged forward. 'You'll just blister your hands, and for nothing. You're not going in, now. And neither am I. Not again. No matter which Fellowship Sorcerer shows up brandishing self-righteous thunderbolts.'
'How else will Glendien deliver the simples?' Kyrialt grumbled with blunt practicality.
'She won't. Not tonight' Dakar sighed. 'Ath's mercy go with them. They'll bide on their own.' He let his knees give, then. Slumped into a crouch at the stair-head, he jammed his exasperated fingers through his frizzled hair. 'Have your wife leave the kettle and packets outside. His Grace will have to fetch for himself if he's got the wits left to realize he still needs them.'
* * *
The wind had dropped to a whisper, then stilled, the brisk scent left by the rain-storm overlaid by a stinging, fresh frost. Talvish huddled into the oiled-wool cloak, returned from his loan to Fianzia. Off duty, but still armed since the side trip to Dame Dawr's that had ended inside a wrecked tavern, he paused on the exposed trail leading upward to the outcrop that crowned the inner citadel. There, Watch Keep's squat crenels cut a stark outline against the starred sky. Shadowed by his helm, his jade eyes surveyed Mearn, who had paused on the grass where the open stair carved into the steep terrain.
'Are you sure, Captain?' the youngest brother s'Brydion asked. 'Be certain, now. Or turn back' The odd opal stud flared errant fire, as he shivered in his jewelled doublet. The rapier at his waist was no weapon for war-time; he had always hated the blood sport of the hunt. Even so, his taut frame had the set of a man who was pressed beyond desperate, and dangerous. Nor was his plea spurious.
Talvish's mood also eschewed humour. 'Go up there, you're going to need backing, my friend.'
Mearn's slim shoulders recoiled. The sentries on duty below had not paused to question their passage: none of the watch sergeants realized, yet, that aught was amiss in the citadel. The check-point stayed relaxed, and the routine of the night guard, flat quiet, throughout their wary approach. Yet nothing was ordinary.
Somewhere, the man who had skewered Sidir in a fight on Duke Bransian's orders still believed that Jeynsa's abduction could be covered in secret.
The word of a clan girl, still in her minority, against three dead soldiers, and one of those a respected veteran in the duke's right-hand pocket? The story won't have to stretch much to seem plausible.' Mearn had seen his last illusions stripped off. Shocked reaction now rocked his foundation.
Talvish refused to withdraw his concern. 'Mearn, you need my witness, as well as my sword. I won't risk the chance, that a covert attack for extortion could be white-washed with impunity.'
The indecent plot had been carried too far. Everything pointed towards Bransian's intention to frame Jeynsa's reaction as impolitic youth, then pin a murderous breach of guest relations upon Rathain's crown delegation.
'Discredit Arithon's standing in public, and our law could demand restitution as forfeit!' Mearn anguished, 'We won't have till noon. My brother's planned his strategy to entrap. He'll push through the assize in the morning. We have too much fear and resentment, run rampant. High feelings will raise hysterical sentiment against every shred of hard evidence.' Mearn grimaced in sickened disgust. 'We are better than this. Or we were, once, as a founding family.'
Yet that had been before the unrest of four kingdoms had come to roost on the s'Brydion ancestral seat. The night view from the cornice spread out unremitting: the dense sprawl of the enemy campfires on the mainland a closed ring that relentlessly grew, as inbound ships daily unloaded fresh levies brought in from Shand.
'Like plaguing locusts,' Talvish remarked, bitter with the wound left by Vhandon's absence. 'Such effortful wreckage, and for nothing more than a liar who preaches a threat from diverging ideas.'
'How that poison has twisted our standards, as well.' The unspoken question remained: just how far had Bransian's insanity le
d them? Who else beyond Liesse, and quite likely Sindelle, had spun tonight's threads of deceit? Mearn measured the turn of the stars overhead. 'Let's move, then. My feet are freezing, and my bollock sack's sucked up so tight, I'm likely to squeak in falsetto.'
The visceral hurt festered, that the truth must be walked without quarter. Talvish's tact understood that brute fact, though a brother might agonize over the need to expose the infamy of his family. 'More than my sword at your back' he said gently. Knowing his act was now informed treason against Alestron's titled duke, the blond captain climbed the stair and overreached his authority. His voice delivered the password to the watch, with intent to suborn the mirror man's relay.
The return challenge came, and found Mearn snapped back into feisty recovery. 'Priority orders!' he rapped, and without saying whose, shoved into the tower the instant the portal was unbolted. 'Upstairs! No delay' He barged past the sergeant posted inside. 'Send signal in code and recall Sevrand from the harbour mouth garrison. I'll receive him here. If the boatman takes his time with the skiff, or the winch crew's asleep at the cliff-head, I will string them up in the galley-men's bar and pink their stripped navels as targets.'
* * *
Uneasy quiet reigned over the guest suite that housed the Crown Prince of Rathain. Dakar kept red-eyed watch. Having set the requested stiff ring of wards, he was left to chew over his frothing anxiety. His scrying already ascertained that Jeynsa in fact was detained without bodily harm. Fionn Areth slept off his drunken stupor, oblivious, while Kyrialt gave his weapons a scouring polish and settled to nap beside Glendien. Sidir slept also, his muscled frame sprawled on the carpeted floor of the still-room. He had dressed in fresh leathers. Except for a draught of restorative tea, he rejected the comfort of coddling. Stoic through crises, he snatched a scout's rest, with his cleaned steel laid alongside, and his limbs covered by his weather-stained mantle.
No one dared assay the stairway, above. The shut door yielded none of its secrets.
Which brooding concern, Arithon s'Ffalenn had no intent to dispel. He had been forced on the alert for too long, immersed in strict demand to the volatile currents of wielding high conjury. Rest was now imperative, and more: he needed his faculties, and Elaira's, restored at a speed that left no room for safety.
The duke's berserk temperament was too deadly dangerous. His hackled fury would not brook defeat the trapped pawn in his hands remained in harm's way, with no sureties placed on the outcome. None of Rathain's feal party were secure until Bransian could be set in his place.
'Bright powers attend us,' Arithon murmured, crying inward for patience and strength. He must snatch this moment of unbroken peace, push what resource he had to renew his frayed focus, and reground the alignment of over-stressed senses.
Jeynsa's hot predicament must wait for morning. Else the outrage sparked by tonight's wrongful injuries would shatter his grip on constraint. The charge placed before him claimed absolute precedence: Elaira's recovery lay under his care. Arithon steadied his jangled nerves. More than love, more than his next breath, he needed her settled and well. To which end, the direct path was both the most pleasurable, and the most fraught with pitfalls.
The bed and the room were still generously warm, the fire built up for Fianzia reduced to glimmering coals. Rather than pile on a new log, Arithon pinched out the candle-lamp. Soft dark left the ambient glow from the hearth to define the chamber's spare furnishings. He worked, hoarding strength, each calm preparation accomplished in economical stages.
Two decoctions of simples soon steamed in glazed mugs. The unwrapped lyranthe awaited nearby, silver strings shining ruby. Alithiel was unsheathed also. Arithon laid the black blade on the mattress, where he then reclined, tucked into the coverlets beside his beloved. Flesh to stripped flesh, he cradled Elaira, while his trembling fingers smoothed her unbraided hair.
He was foolishly dizzy. Not just from the risen flashes of heat that raked him over in back-lash. The close scent of her turned all his senses: lavender mingled with traces of birch smoke, from the brazier that had heated her remedies. He caressed her skin, smooth as moon-rinsed marble. Stroked her neck, where the pulse raced too rapidly.
This time, in truth, the hour was his. As the partnership forged in the cottage at Merior had been foredoomed from the outset, this night was not going to strand them with yet another tormented parting. Sidir's unorthodox healing had opened the way. Grace and caring now must guard this safe passage.
Mage and musician, Arithon began to trace Elaira's inert form with his touch. He did not massage, but admired: a lingering, sweet courtship pitched first to realign her depleted vitality. As he moved, he raised mage-sight, and laced his own rhythm through hers. Linked his own breathing and heart-beat, which already rebounded from the restoratives he had dosed for himself. He soothed, coaxed, and quieted. As time passed, his stroking hands turned to stimulate, then to tease the response of awakened arousal. Her life signs his music, his desire her kindling flame, he opened the flux points and drew on the depths of initiate knowledge to weave. Female to his male, he led her depleted exhaustion into a yearning thirst to seek ecstasy.
As he had in the cottage in Merior, his spirit called hers back to blazing awareness, as no other living force could.
When, at due length, her eyes opened to meet him, the need in them burned him, unstoppable.
'You realize what I'm asking,' he opened, contrite. 'A flawed gift, under need to rebuild balance soonest, while pushed in the quicksands of crisis. I could wish -'
Her touch brushed his lips. One finger, caressing, damped his torrent of apology. She gave back the soaring grace of her smile. 'By my choice, as well. No matter whether the stones in the headland should shake down the stars and the moon.'
"This is not Rathain,' he reassured her. 'Nowhere near the volatile interface that quickens the flow within the free wilds.' That truth she would see: no ripple of silver-hazed power aligned with the flux lines, strung active between them. Only the coals in the fire-place burnished the tenderness, mirrored as his own, on her features. 'My crown prince's attunement will not rouse the land in Melhalla, or stun any sleepers from rest.'
'Unless they're unrighteously listening.' Her sly humour up-ended his heart, as she matched joy with visceral bravery. 'Only one of your teas will be necessary.'
The cup with the simple to prevent conception met her parted lips, held in his steadied hand. After she swallowed the bitter-sweet dregs, he kissed her until heightened pleasure destroyed thought, ravished breath, and dazzled the senses.
'I trust you,' she murmured through urgency. 'Completely. Without end, and before the beginning.'
Wordless, he laced her trembling fingers through the black steel of Alithiel's grip. Then, gently relentless, he closed his taut grasp. Caged her hand with his own, as his aching flesh quivered with unbearable suspension against her.
'You are unsurpassed.' Arithon cradled her one instant more. Then he laid his cheek against hers. Drowned in the exotic scent of her hair, he savoured the irrevocable, last moment, then launched them both over the brink. The poised spiral unleashed, while move for move, she cried out with exquisite welcome and matched him.
The fair moment enraptured them with light and song, and was not left unrequited. Starved desire achieved union, as a sword's steel, unsheathed, exploded to shimmering light. Alithiel blazed and belled into bright harmony, with the Paravian wards in the citadel also arisen in resonant defence. The embedded Koriani sigil to enforce fertility was cut off, inert, its insidious spring trap held latent. For this rarefied interval, within secured walls, the dark force of Selidie's power could not strike through or entangle her targeted victims.
* * *
More than Dakar sensed the subliminal, marrow-deep tone, as the wardings imbued in Paravian stonework shuddered the rock of the headland. His outburst of swearing sprang in equal measure from horrified fury and shattered relief. Neither sentiment was shared by the Koriani Matriarch.
Prime Seli
die recoiled from the venomous sting that curbed the reach of her oath-bonded mastery. She sat awake, still enthroned in her chair, within the night-dark pavilion. As the connection that channelled her live tie to Elaira scattered into burst static, she did not rail against set-back. Her rage stayed cold. Though her direct plot might be temporarily thwarted, her breathless laugh became prelude to a crow of triumph.
None were present to listen. Only the inconsequential boy page had been retained to attend her. Lirenda was packed off to bed with a posset, and the diligent circle of senior servers dismissed, their task momentarily complete. Wrapped against the cold air, her porcelain face tintless, the Koriani Matriarch murmured over the crystal array left actively poised on her side-table. 'Our too-clever quarry has taken the bait! Arithon has engaged, and accepted my challenge.'
Time and folly would snare him. The insatiable fruit of his consummate love would fan tonight's blaze towards careless addiction.
Selidie avowed to hasten that mis-step. Every power and pawn within her grasp would be pressured to flush her royal prey. To that end, she must break the Paravian wardings that championed Arithon's foothold. The peerless defences in the citadel walls would have to be breached, or abandoned. Alestron's defeat would wrest back her opening to resume pursuit upon open ground.
Prime Selidie freed the stiffened claws that remained of her fire-scarred hands. Her fumbling touch engaged the first of two crystals left tuned for her use by the servers. Her choice by-passed the one which reflected the anchorage behind Lugger's Islet where the Sunwheel ships waylaid by Vhandon's refugees were being refitted as war prizes by Parrien's sea-wolves. First, her crippled fingers stroked the crystal linked to Lysaer s'Ilessid, lying asleep in the Alliance war camp . . .
* * *
Something was wrong. Sulfin Evend awoke to the certainty. If he did not possess an initiate awareness, the grand oath he had sworn at Althain Tower enhanced his innate sensitivity. Whatever had nagged him to gooseflesh would not let him settle or sleep.
