Fugitive Prince

by Janny Wurts

  “You must listen!” cried Jieret, frightened by the dismissal. “After the slaughter at Tal Quorin, would you take my gifted dreams lightly?”

  “But I don’t.” Unrepentant, Arithon accepted a blanket from Dakar that was combed free of furtive seals to bring sleep. He flicked the wool across his wet frame, winced as he fumbled a one-handed clasp, then stepped back to forestall more assistance. “I can manage. Am doing so, in fact. Your Sight does run true, more’s the pity. But for the sake of Rathain, I’d have preferred to be spared the unnecessary favor. As my oathsworn caithdein, your presence here can’t improve my wretched odds of surviving.” He spun, tripped over the stool in a startling turn of spoiled grace. “Now give me the details without any melodrama.”

  “The time seemed high summer,” Jieret resumed, ferociously bland. “A public execution, under town auspice, with every appropriate trapping.”

  “How splendid and trite. How predictable!” Arithon gasped back shrilling laughter. Perhaps goaded on by his caithdein’s sharp recoil, he bit back like salt in a sore, “All right, my sworn lord, your duty’s been met to the last grasping letter of the law. By kingdom charter, I’ve been properly tried and warned. Now for love of the realm, you are free. Return to Rathain. The fishing sloop that brought you sails tomorrow for Carithwyr on my personal orders. Her captain was told to expect you on board. You will cross High King Eldir’s neutral realm of Havish to reach your homeland, and avoid another tangle with Tysan’s headhunters.”

  “Go,” Dakar urged, cued by a mix of dread and epiphany, since every shred of bad news out of Tysan would have emerged through that prior exchange with the fishermen. Arithon was not sanguine for very good reason, beside being too spent to cope. The Mad Prophet grabbed Jieret’s elbow, wide-eyed and imploring. “Come away. What you’re seeing’s not temper, but a mannerless plea to be alone.”

  The clansman stayed fixed, his bleak, considered gaze upon the motionless form of his prince. He looked as if he might speak.

  The Mad Prophet plugged his ears, shut his eyes, and cringed like a dog that expected a kick.

  Yet Jieret held silent. When no explosion came from the figure under the blanket, the spellbinder cracked one eye open.

  “For mercy’s sake, Dakar, just get him out,” Arithon stated in hoarse, deadened misery.

  Like an obedient, fat ninepin bowling down a young oak, the Mad Prophet plowed Rathain’s young caithdein into prudent retreat through the doorway.

  Close Confidence

  Summer 5648

  The squall passed. Above the swept rocks of the fortress at Corith, stars emerged from the cloud cover. Sea winds combed the headland and slapped through the sailcloth roofed over the ruined north drum keep. Bronzed by the smoking stub of the oil cresset lit to treat Arithon’s hand, Dakar sat awake, keeping watch. Long since, the spooled silk and needles used to close up the gash had been tidied and put away. On the pallet, stone quiet, the Teir’s’Ffalenn lay sprawled in exhausted sleep.

  The Mad Prophet listened to the call of the night-flying owl, mournful between the irregular tap of twine lacings. He waited, alert for the moment of inevitable aftermath. No man mentioned the Havens inlet in the Shadow Master’s hearing that dreams did not come and goad the prince screaming from sleep. Grateful that foresight had seen Lord Jieret dismissed before the inevitable backlash, Dakar settled his chin on plump wrists.

  An hour passed, uneventful. The night smelled of puddled rock, mingled near at hand with the astringent bite of medicinal herbs. Gusts thrummed sighing through the cedars down the slope, cut by the whistle of a sentry, come back from the headland to roust his relief watch. Dakar traced out a fine rune. His trained talent as spellbinder raised an appeal to the air, then bent the element’s given consent to work a small construct of deflection. When the sailor just wakened in the compound raised a noisy string of complaint, no ripple of disturbance crossed the line of soft conjury to upset Arithon’s rest.

  Somewhere in the thickets a fox barked. The midsummer stars arced across the black zenith, their dance unchanged through the centuries since man first inhabited Athera. Against their seasonal harmony, a whispered rustle of discord: on the pallet, one fine-boned hand spasmed closed. The Master of Shadow curled into a locked huddle and loosed a harsh breath through his teeth.

  Dakar crossed to the pallet. He murmured a cantrip to ground his inner strength in the ageless stone of the headland. Then, as Arithon moaned, twisted sidewards, and thrashed, he grasped the slighter man’s shoulder. He caught the fist that snapped up toward his chin, winced for the abuse to new bandages, then pressed down in firm restraint. The prince he resisted might be sorrowfully thin, but his struggles were inventive and difficult. Dakar required main force to prevail. He turned the sharp s’Ffalenn features into the blankets and stifled the rising, agonized groan into the muddle of bedding.

  “Wake,” he murmured. “Arithon, throw off the dream and come back.” He barbed each word in spell-turned clarity. “This is Corith, and everyone is safe.”

  Dakar waited, spoke again. He absorbed the next onslaught of redoubled, blind fight as the Shadow Master tried to bludgeon free. Against his undignified need to cry out, the Mad Prophet held steadfast, until the corded tension under his hands dissolved through a spasm of transition. The Teir’s’Ffalenn in his care passed from nightmare into living remembrance of a horror no passage of time might erase. Then, as often happened, Dakar waited, silent, while the Master of Shadow softly wept.

  The cresset by then had dwindled to a coal. Rinsed by ruby light, the Mad Prophet stayed his sympathy, while Rathain’s crown prince cocked an elbow and pushed himself upright. The single-handed sail to slip pursuit from the mainland had worn him. The resilience never recovered since Vastmark had abraded further in the months spent ashore. Terrors of guilt and conscience dulled the green eyes that regarded Dakar through the gloom, left them lusterless as sea-battered glass. The expressive, fine bones of the Masterbard’s hand rested slack on the coverlet, bundled flesh sapped of small grace.

  “Daelion Fatemaster forgive me for the way I treated Jieret,” were the first words the Shadow Master said. He looked fevered. Minutes passed as he steadied his breathing, and his high, sweating flush subsided back into pallor. “He is Rathain’s true caithdein, courage and honor to his core. So like his father, he’s become. Does he know even yet what he means to me? Should he take harm from Lysaer’s miscalled judgments, I don’t think I could stand it. Let Dharkaron Avenger redress his wronged feelings. I had to send him back to his people.”

  “You did right,” Dakar soothed. “Lord Jieret will go, and soon after, the Khetienn will sail.”

  An interval passed without speech. Arithon tipped back his tangled head and rested against the worn stone of the bastion. The steep, angled features of his ancestry carved sharper in the uncertain scrawl of deep shadows. “If Cattrick succeeds, we’ll have ships,” he murmured, his ongoing effort to control his fraught nerves sketched in pained creases around his eyes. “The clans can be taken to safety. We only have to find the Paravians.” His hope was a refuge from the drive of Desh-thiere’s curse behind the strong wardspells that masked them.

  In the dimness, Dakar averted his face. Ill practiced at patience, he fiddled with his sleeve cuffs, then launched on a sharp change in subject. “What will you do about Jieret’s new augury?”

  “Ignore it, unless the Khetienn’s search fails.” Arithon’s bitterness scraped through like old rust. “What can I do anyway? My mage-sight’s still blind. Given your help, I couldn’t even scry through to find a sane outcome in Vastmark. Ath knows, since that blunder, naught’s changed.”

  “Stop,” Dakar snapped. “You can’t let your past write the future.” Like ill omen, the fading last flame in the torch dipped to an ember and died. This moment, Dakar found no comfort in darkness. “Right now you would do best by sleeping,” he advised.

  An oath ripped back in sharp, precise syllables. Bedding rustled. Arithon settled prostrate
on the cot. His limbs did not move, but through mage-sight, Dakar sensed his eyes were still open. When an hour passed, and his needling conscience kept him wakeful, he loosed a soft word in resignation.

  The spidered threads of the spell already prepared between Dakar’s hands enfolded his consent on a thought. The wide, tortured gaze became masked by the sweep of black lashes. Tight breathing steadied. Arithon s’Ffalenn relaxed fully at last, the unquiet gnaw of his lacerated spirit eased back into dreamless rest.

  Weary, aching, the Mad Prophet arose from long vigil. He shuffled his way to the keep’s narrow doorway, and in the drawing pull of the earth through his bone marrow, measured the interval before dawn. Another figure bulked dark alongside the drum tower’s threshold. Lord Jieret lay curled there, his great sword at hand, and his hawk features set in repose. A contradictory tautness knit through his body warned of the fact he was wakeful. Dakar chose not to speak, but stepped out, his intent to seek solitude and settle drawn nerves on the heights overlooking the sea.

  A grip like fixed iron trapped his ankle. He tripped, crashed flat, and bit back an outraged howl as his cheek slapped into a mud puddle. Then outcry became moot. Rathain’s caithdein rolled over his felled form and pinned him facedown in the dirt. A predatory hand vised his nape and a knife bit a slanting, cold line across the pouched skin of his throat. Dakar gasped. Contact with the blade shot a dull jolt of misery through his mage-sense. The kept steel of its edge still shrilled with the strung resonance of despair, dark imprint of a crown prince’s blood oath.

  “Jieret,” he grunted. “For pity, let up.”

  “Ath, you’ve a fine sense of arrogance to try and keep me from my liege’s confidence!” But the hold loosened. The ugly touch of the knife blade lifted. Lord Jieret backed off and squatted on his haunches while his victim rolled upright and swiped a slurry of grime from his beard.

  “You were eavesdropping,” the Mad Prophet accused, plaintive.

  “Aye, and where else does any caithdein sleep, but across his sworn prince’s threshold?” Met by affront, the clan chieftain muffled a cough of laughter behind his wrist. “Dharkaron’s immortal bollocks, you forget. My forefathers were standing down testy s’Ffalenn princes while yours were still pissing in swaddling bands.”

  Dakar blotted his moist face with napped cuffs, spat something gritty, and forcibly noosed back his temper. “You couldn’t have helped. And your suspicions are wasted. I’m no longer Arithon’s enemy.”

  “Does that even signify?” Jieret snicked his knife back home in its sheath, careful to damp the steel silent. “I sat with my liege through the night when my people died for him at Tal Quorin. Again, the time he was forced to burn the trade fleet at Minderl Bay. I’ve seen how he weeps for the nightmares. I know his fear, that the ones he’s come to love will lose their lives.” All purpose, he finished, “My place is to stand at his side. Caith d’ein, shadow behind the throne.”

  “I’m unlikely to test his given will on that matter,” said Dakar. “He wants you safely back in Rathain. And he’s right. You can’t steward his realm from the uncharted sea aboard his brigantine.”

  Jieret looked away through a tigerish pause, the jut of his profile outthrust against the film of fine mist. “What do you know that you aren’t saying, prophet?”

  “Fiends plague, your whole line was bred to be difficult!” Dakar plowed mulishly erect. “Before you flattened me, I’d planned to take a long walk. The rocks here are practiced at minding themselves, and your liege is secure. I set wards.”

  The clan chief rose also, his oiled stride shortened to pace the Mad Prophet’s bobbling progress. The unlikely pair crossed the compound, captured in mismatched reflection through the silver-plate scattering of puddles. Beyond the gapped walls, the cliff path lay fogbound, shadowed in the refrain of wild surf hewing the obdurate shoreline.

  When the sailhand huddled wakeful by the notch to the harbor failed to challenge their passage, Jieret raised gingery eyebrows. “You’ve set spells of concealment? What do you fear? Or do you already know from the Fellowship Sorcerers that Arithon’s course carries risk?”

  “Damn you for being your mother’s son after all. She always guessed far too much.” Dakar snatched an irritable swat at his nape where a bloodsucking insect had bitten. “I share some wider knowledge from Sethvir of Althain, and Arithon as well, since the Paravian charts he was given to steer by were lent for his use by the Sorcerer.”

  The Mad Prophet stalled, hopeful, while the grate of his tread over chipped rock and gravel silenced crickets, and the mist silted droplets in his hair. Jieret ranged beside him, his panther’s stride soundless, and his expectancy taut as strung wire.

  “Shark,” Dakar ripped out. “One taste of blood, you keep circling.” He swiped past the dripping boughs of a cedar and resumed without apology for his companion’s adroit duck to avoid a slap in the chest. “Very well, yes, there’s more danger than you know, even granted your heritage as clanblood.” The Mad Prophet found a boulder, damp but sheltered from the wind. He sat to explain the gift of the grand earth link ceded to the Sorcerer Sethvir by Athera’s last guardian centaur.

  “The network ties the Sorcerer’s consciousness to everything on Athera, animate life or still matter. But the Seven have postulated the connection may hold selective blind spots. Its weave could be subject to guarding wards set by the old races themselves.” Dakar stabbed fleshy fingers toward the masked edge of the horizon. “The evidence lies in default. The Paravians appear to have vanished from Ath’s creation. And yet, though diminished, through strands and deep auguries, their presence still figures in the weave of Athera’s life pattern.”

  Simple words, to frame this world’s penultimate mystery. Dakar paused in sorrowful reflection, his brows snarled down above his pug nose, and his chin bristled out beneath his beard. What eluded the arcane acts of scrying might yet be uncovered by a manned expedition. The oceans girdled the far side of the world, immensely vast and wide. If an isle existed, wrapped under wards, or some hidden, green haven lurked on the shores of the far continent, Arithon would set sail in the Khetienn to seek.

  “Your prince hopes to beg sanctuary from the Mistwraith’s fell curse,” Dakar ended. “That scarcely offers much hope for your clans, but the Fellowship Sorcerers agree, Paravian protection offers his surest possibility of reprieve.”

  Broad-shouldered as a sentinel against drifting mist, Jieret stared out to sea. “The Fellowship Sorcerer, Ciladis, set off on that quest almost two centuries past. He has never come back.”

  “Nobody argues the choice harbors peril!” Dakar snapped. “The old races have no desire to be found, else their presence would be known to Sethvir.” He paused, choked silent by memories very few left alive could understand: of the awesome, pure grace of the unicorns dancing, that could sear sight to blindness from too terrible a surfeit of ecstasy. His very marrow ached for the deep, drowning peace of a centaur’s presence, or the lyrical harmonies in a sunchild’s song. These mysteries, once experienced, could draw mortal minds to forget food and drink, and waste away, lost, until the spirit forsook the body, lured beyond all common things of earth.

  Aggrieved beyond words for the loss done the world by the Paravians’ passing, Dakar was jerked back to the trials of the present by Jieret’s harsh grip on his wrists. “Take care of my liege. By my charge as caithdein, see him happy and secure, or bring him back whole. Else by Dharkaron’s bleak vengeance, I will scour the world’s four quarters to find you, and make sure you suffer my judgment.”

  Dakar gave a raw, hooting chuckle. “That threat cuts both ways, you barbarian wolf. To harry me for my failures, you must first stay alive, and free of a galley slave’s coffle.” He shrugged, disengaged from the clan chieftain’s hold, and heaved his short bulk off the boulder. Around them, the last of the dark was fast fading. Gulls screamed above the jumbled, gray crags, and the knifing wind wore the smells of seawrack and salt. Dakar clasped his arms to ward off the chill, while the char
coal sky brightened and limned his stout form against a lucent pearl backdrop. “Go where your heart calls. The sleep spell I left won’t hold in full sunlight. Your liege will wake and feel rested. He’ll want to see your face and be sure you are well before the hour comes to sail. Give him that much, for the journey he embarks on could easily span the next decade.”

  Between a breath and a heartbeat, the Mad Prophet was gone, vanished into the raw cotton mist as if his presence had been knit out of dreams. Jieret was left to the desolate splendor of the cliff head, consumed by worried thoughts, while the throaty crash of flood tide slammed white torrents over the seamed rocks below. Suspicion remained. The Mad Prophet had not disclosed all he knew. A shiver touched Jieret as he measured how subtly the spellbinder had changed.

  While playing the drunkard, Dakar made it easy to forget his five centuries of study under Fellowship auspices.

  Disarmingly masked behind vexed words and bother, the fat prophet scored his clear point: he could have exerted his trained will at any moment, used powers of sorcery to set one blustering, young clan chief firmly into his place.

  Jieret flushed, then loosed a chagrined shout of laughter. He checked the hang of his weapons out of habit and started back toward the ruined fortress.

  For Arithon’s sake, Dakar had indulged him. Whatever reason underlay the vicious slaughter at the Havens, the shifty little spellbinder had entrusted Rathain’s prince with the dubious benefits of his loyalty. From that, the realm’s caithdein must salvage what peace of mind he could; his liege would not sail westward into peril without an ally to guard his left shoulder.

  “Though Ath Creator,” Jieret ripped out, as if air itself would carry his balked temper back to the Mad Prophet’s ears, “I’d rather be boarding the Khetienn myself than turning tail back to Rathain.”