by Janny Wurts
Nothing. The flux fields that wrapped them burned clean at each layering, their shimmering colours untainted.
Elaira drew in a shivering breath. Tucked securely beneath her love's cosseting warmth, she measured every rigorous step he entrained in safe-guard. Leashed, unwilling, upon the rarified pinnacle that presaged the plunge towards enraptured surrender, she met Arithon's opened eyes, unconcerned.
'Beloved,' she whispered. 'Your care is unmatched.' Her drowning gaze held him, as language could not, and the crystalline flood of her gratitude threatened the gossamer seal on the final barrier between them . . .
Vision dissolved into stuttering static, undone by Sidir's rousting shake, followed up by the scout tracker's cry of dismay.
'I have lost them!' The trail his exacting talent discerned faded into the tangle of undergrowth. The subtle eddies left traced on the flux where a man and a woman had trodden, first diminished, then vanished away.
Dakar shut his eyes. Defeat made no difference. Rampant vision induced by drugged smoke ran outside of the body's five senses. Around and above him, life teemed beyond form. Aware of the night-flying moths as uncounted, jittering pin-points, and of the black well of the underground springs, overlaid by the knit web-work of roots underpinning a mystical forest, the spellbinder had little choice but to rely upon Sidir's support. That, or else fall unconscious. To lose himself into an unbridled trance would be exceedingly dangerous. The insane mix of tienelle combined with strong brandy had already sapped his equilibrium. He felt himself tossed like a chip in a storm, without any anchor or mooring. He might easily dream himself out of his skin, to tumble amid the beguiling dark where the sublime chord of the star song keened in limitless harmony.
At the dissolute verge, Dakar wrestled his unruly senses. The coiling spin of the lane flux resisted. His need to ground back into cognizant reason became flayed like a rag in a shredder. Belated chagrin touched through inchoate chaos: he divined why the tracker was blinded. The pursuit trail had cut off for a crown prince's stay of protection. The ward had been spun with such seamless finesse, the land's subtle nature would appear serene and unruffled.
Yet, in fact, the flowed energies turned into a spiral that beguiled birth-born talent and mage-sense alike.
That conclusion must have been mumbled aloud, with Sidir prompted to exclamation. 'Ath preserve! We've no choice.' Appalled, he insisted, 'You're going to have to break through.'
'My powers are hobbled,' Dakar stated, thick. Use of language encumbered him. Adrift as he was, he could scarcely explain: the line of permission garnered from Arithon might pass between the ribbon-thin dance of the flux. But the boundary itself was forged by aware partnership, through a sanctioned prince's link with the land. Raw forces engendered by oathsworn attunement had invoked an inviolate well of protection. 'I can't gainsay the vested powers of guardianship bound over to Rathain's blood heritage!'
'You can't,' interjected an astringent voice, just arrived on a chill blast of air. 'But our Fellowship underpins all charter law. We are the source of crown sovereignty.'
'Kharadmon!' the spellbinder gasped, overwhelmed as the Sorcerer's presence unfurled. Unshielded vision rinsed blind by that shearing vortex of spirit light, Dakar shrank, sweaty fingers jammed over his face. 'Mercy on us, we're desperate! If you've come to help, I fear that the crisis has already passed beyond saving.'
'No.' Kharadmon's certainty excited the flux, and tripped off a fresh spate of imagery . . .
. . . of Arithon, with Elaira pressed full length against him. The white pitch of their tension lay poised between heart-beats, as one final time, he wielded his disciplined focus. While earth and air blazed to the rising flame that was going to unleash a grand confluence, he curbed his fierce passion and went still. Dauntless in his care, restrained at the tremulous edge of completion, the Teir's'Ffalenn scoured their auric fields for any spoiling taint of wrong spell-craft.
For that drawn second the balance swung, hanging, the spirit tie to integrity stamped over the consuming drive of the flesh . . .
'Dakar! Get ready,' cracked Kharadmon. 'When the ward falls, you will use the permission that Arithon gave into your hands.'
A razing force clear as an arctic wind peeled the dross from the Mad Prophet's mind. Snapped back to clarity by Kharadmon's touch, he saw with the Sorcerer's perception . . .
. . . song, that unfurled in a cresting shimmer that was sourced in a dynamic joy. At the center, ivritten in light, upon light, Arithon s’Ffalenn smiled upon his beloved. 'Nothing,' he murmured. 'Your radiance is untarnished.'
He gathered her nape in his interlaced hands, bent his head; kissed her mouth as she opened beneath him. She caught him close, then pressed into his warmth, embracing the tender pain of the thrust that would bind their ecstatic completion . . .
'Too late!' Dakar cried. 'Ath preserve, we're already too late!'
He sensed the last access point, tearing free. Then the shattering flare, as the land's flux responded. Skin burning, mage-sight deluged, he felt the flickering glow that presaged the electrified union. Through his bones, through his being, the rarified note of a cascading harmony peaked towards exaltation. The well of Athera's grand mystery quivered, its silver-point matrix tuned to resound with the spark of explosive release.
Except Kharadmon acted.
Utterly ruled by his binding directive, he did not entrain the gentled grace of the elements, woven by free-will permission. Nor, as the Paravian dancers shaped power, in summons that called down the paean of glory sourced in the grand harmony beyond the veil. The Sorcerer wielded the initiate magic, bestowed by the will of the dragons.
The force he unleashed was a double-edged flame, forged from the raw stuff of paradox. Its nature encompassed the interlaced hoop of creative birth and rampant destruction. The conjury hammered down as a scouring Fire!
Earth quaked to the shuddering impact. As lane flux tied into balance gave way, raw gusts lashed the trees, out of season. The gentle stay fashioned by Arithon's singing tore apart with a bang like a thunder-clap.
Ahead, in the glen, prince and lady entwined: most cruelly exposed as they reached their long-sought requital.
The weaving between them was too fierce to sunder. No spoken warning might curb the impetus already set into motion. As the last check on Arithon's mage-taught restraint yielded into replete consummation, Kharadmon intervened. At one stroke, he razed through. His fierce grip caught short and arrested the expanding flare of the crown prince's subtle aura.
Shorn defenceless, Arithon had no chance to recoil. Ripped blind and deaf, wrested wholly numb, he did not hear Elaira's shocked outcry. Nor could he react as Dakar jerked the leash of his oath-bound permission. Necessity abrogated all mercy.
The wrought cipher of severance sheared in like cut glass, straight down to his unguarded heart. The effect dropped the victim in senseless collapse. Bound in an uncompromised noose of tight spell-craft, Arithon s'Ffalenn tumbled limp inside of Elaira's clasped arms.
She keened as his conscious awareness snapped from her. Wrung to tears as his slackened weight sprawled onto her shoulder, she railed at the source of intrusion. 'No. Damn you, no! I don't care what disaster. He would have our joy unmolested.'
Dakar jerked short, panting. 'A child would come of your union! Dare you proceed without his free consent?'
A step behind, Sidir knelt in the grass. He unlaced and peeled off his jerkin. Eyes averted, contrite, he tossed the shed garment. His gesture masked the half-coupled nakedness left stunned by their brute intervention. He retreated quickly. But the wounding could not be erased, that naught could be done beneath Ath's wide sky to restore the enchantress's raped privacy.
Kharadmon had no moment to spare for regret. His chill presence moved in, and with exigent ruthlessness, sliced every tie of etheric connection. Granted his right by Torbrand's founding oath, which bound every s'Ffalenn descendant, the Sorcerer disarmed the sprung coils of entrapment. He stopped off subtle access and kept the Prime's lurking sigil
from snaring the fate of Rathain's hapless prince.
'The babe would be a daughter,' Dakar explained, breathless. 'Your Prime meant to recall you back to cloistered service, with your unborn child claimed as Koriani property. Royal get would be bound to initiate service, through your prior tie to the order.'
'Except that I know herb lore,' Elaira said, tart. She flinched, as the Sorcerer's swift ministrations raised chills across her damp skin. 'Did you think I would so viciously serve a man that I love more than my very life?'
Wrapped in her indignant, sheltering arms, Arithon's unconscious form shuddered in recoil from Kharadmon's stringent safe-guards. Painfully conscious, Elaira sensed the jarring sting of each break, as the energetic cords so tenderly forged in delight became sliced off, then capped, unrequited.
Even pressed down into witless oblivion, Arithon's body protested the shock of that intrusive working. Elaira cradled his senseless weight. With his mind and emotions cleaved from her awareness, she suffered the throes of a physical contact still living and seamlessly intimate. Her beloved's rushed breathing feathered her cheek. She sensed, by the rapid pound of his heart-beat, the ache of his sundered need, ripped from the torrent of her own state of frustrated arousal.
Her anger burned too sudden and sharp. 'I find your manners without human grace, and your roughshod handling inexcusable.'
Kharadmon fielded her acrimony, silent. Absorbed beyond pity, pressed to ruthless speed, he razed through each layer of the crown prince's aura. He had surgical skill. His ranging power was most careful to honour the integrity of the enchantress. As well, he respected the active currents that still married the Teir's'Ffalenn to the land's flux. The Sorcerer proceeded without striking the least quiver of primal disharmony.
Which set Rathain's crown prince, arrested, adrift, in the torment of isolate solitude.
'You can't leave him like this!' Elaira protested. 'Not without breaking his health!'
'We won't,' the Fellowship Sorcerer agreed. 'But I can't reverse fate. Looping time would be folly. The flux lines have already crested too high. They must be let down, or else risk this forest to brush-fires and drought. The back-lash would seed disasters far worse, which could ravage the southern territories.' His command to Elaira rebutted all argument. 'You will not interfere! If you try, the Prime's plotted spring trap cannot do other than trigger and bind him.'
Kharadmon's next order was issued to Dakar. 'Toss off that jerkin. Then do as you must. I can't help, disembodied. The lane flux is inducted. His Grace is still ritually fused to the land, and you'll have to unleash the grand confluence.'
'I can't touch him!' the Mad Prophet cried in dismay. 'Ath wept, that's a rank desecration!'
'You'll have to!' the Fellowship Sorcerer snapped. 'Else the heat of the summer will linger too long. Dry winds will scorch a year's harvest to ruin. Worse, you'll see massive storms that will tear the southcoast to wrack and destruction.'
'Don't fail him, Dakar.' Undone by sorrow, Elaira enfolded her dearest beloved against her unabashed breast. She tugged off Sidir's blanketing jerkin, then twined her fingers through Arithon's hair. Just as bravely, she extended herself to salve the spellbinder's appalled shock and excoriating misery. 'You know your liege well. He is going to be nettled. But if as you say there's a child's fate at risk, he can't hold necessity against you.'
'Stand by me, then,' Dakar pleaded, stricken. 'I daren't attempt this without your support.'
He bent, unwilling. She, as reluctant, shifted aside, then released her embrace and let Dakar gather the Teir's'Ffalenn's tumbled weight from her arms. She did understand. No tactful care on his part could defuse the impact of this betrayal. Dakar laid his liege on the grass. More than gentle: his harrowed devotion was reverent.
'You cannot delay,' Kharadmon pointed out. 'The earth flux is charged. Its coil will back-flow, not dissipate. For each second you hesitate, the lane force burns hotter. You must lift the prince back to surface sensation or risk damage to his aware cognizance.'
'Daelion Fatemaster's heart! This is cruelty,' Dakar gritted in useless protest. He braced himself, cringing, then murmured, 'Forgive.'
Then, as Elaira laced her fingers through Arithon's hands, the spellbinder moved, and slackened one stay from his set of locked bindings.
Arithon's lids fluttered. Held in a cloud-cotton state of suspension, he regained aware feeling, and thought, but not any freedom of movement. The spark that ignited deep in his eyes evinced no arrtbiguous doubt: he understood his demeaning condition. His fury was clear, and fuelled white-hot by the well of his unresolved passion.
Elaira's breath caught, as his torn hurt flared across the restored link between them. She spoke at once to deflect his distress, though the admission shamed her past reason. 'My Prime spun a trap, which your friends have disarmed. If you wish to weep, I will bear it.'
His glance shifted, alarmed, then discerned Dakar's pending intention. Cold ferocity became rage: towering; wild; and caged beyond reach of all recourse.
The Mad Prophet stayed armoured against crippling remorse. There could be no sanity, otherwise. While Elaira averted her glance in raw grief, he proceeded. A deft stroke here, a flicked finger there, each measured sensation designed to unstring a sacrosanct self-integrity. He found his way, swiftly. Five hundred years of feckless dalliance delivered the expertise into his hand.
Nor was the Fellowship Sorcerer withdrawn behind his adamant authority. Kharadmon held the lane's poised forces in balance. Throughout the hanging, volatile second, as the crux of the moment unfolded, he enclosed Rathain's crown prince within the charge of his limitless caring. Enveloped outside of that tender shield, Elaira cried out, forsaken.
Arithon's body arched and released. His seed jetted over the grasses.
Light flared, then burned, and a pealing note sounded. The summer air shimmered, while the pent-back ley burst and fired, and sorrow keened like desolation. While Kharadmon tempered the flash-point surge of energies, and down-stepped the spike in the lane flux, Dakar yanked back as though singed.
'Necessity,' he said into those furious eyes, driven with the helpless pain of violation. 'Look carefully. See for yourself. Use my eyesight, if you don't believe me.'
His reply held a subtlety of response, unexpected: Elaira sensed Dakar's revealing, quick gesture that opened a line of discernment.
Along with Arithon, she beheld how Selidie Prime had engaged her high art for manipulation. The master sigil of her initiate's oath had been used to conceal an inexcusable meddling. Stamped into the aura just inside her hip, the enchantress was shown the planted sigil that would enact a conception, then the wound barb of the spring-lock intended to transfer to Arithon, that would plant a child upon any woman he might ever engage in the future. The ugly chain had been arrested just shy of enacting its malicious intent.
Elaira went white. Then she shuddered, turned her face into Arithon's hair, and wept in outraged desolation. Dakar rallied enough to react, draped her crushed mantle over her, then supported her bowed shoulders. Nobody spoke. No word could ease heart-break. While Arithon languished, undone in forced sleep, Kharadmon resumed work with immaculate care. He cleared the entangling cords strung by sexual contact until the crown prince's aura burned clean, restored to astringent tidiness.
When the Fellowship Sorcerer's presence stood down, it was Dakar who retrieved the dropped shirt and covered the unconscious crown prince.
'I didn't know,' Elaira murmured, wrung sick.
'Your Prime altered your memory,' Kharadmon said, precise. 'Luhaine did the back-trace, at Sethvir's request. The sigil would have been planted before last winter, in the course of your summons for audience.'
She recalled the hour, clearly enough. A quartz sphere had changed hands within the Prime's presence, one fateful morning at Highscarp. Yet Elaira recollected no trace of the burn, as those vile, spelled ciphers had transferred. 'Ath preserve us both, I never suspected.'
'You can't dwell on such misery,' Dakar entrea
ted. 'Tonight's threat is disarmed, and you now hold an informed awareness. We need to be done, here. Let me call Sidir. With least offence, he should be asked to bear his sworn liege off to bed.'
'On whose permission?' the Sorcerer demanded. 'Your wish is well-meant, but disrespectful. We're cosseting an embarrassment, not a bleeding trauma!'
Elaira pushed straight and responded at once. 'Let Sidir retire. Leave Arithon to me. My instinct will know what to do for him.'
'Your Prime Matriarch could still take coercive action!' Kharadmon warned. 'Luhaine's on station, watching the enclave your order maintains at Forthmark. He's alerted Sethvir that we have complications. Elaira, did you know that Prime Selidie has taken charge of your personal crystal?'
'Ath's pity!' cried Dakar, stunned by the weight of wide-ranging implication. Is there no ending? Such power has granted a clear line of reach into everything we have just done here!'
'We can't mend that.' The discorporate Sorcerer's nettlesome nature poised back into contained cogitation. 'Ath's adepts were the ones who took charge of that quartz. Nobody knows what prompted their choice, since it's not in their nature to dispatch a crystal back into domination.'
'But I do know.' Wrung pale, Elaira restated the facts as she remembered them. 'The adept who came honoured the crystal's clear preference. He told me the quartz wished to serve by free choice.'
'A riddle!' fumed Kharadmon, out of patience. Unlike Luhaine, he found the esoterics of minerals a morass of vexing frustration. 'One day, perhaps, we'll pursue the answer. Quartz crystals perceive us in ways we can't fathom. Somewhere, there will be a future that's hidden from Sethvir's extended awareness. Tonight, we can't settle for blind speculation. A piquant mystery cannot avert the immediate possibility of an attack.'
'Then set seals of safe-guard!' the enchantress appealed, at last stung to desolation. Frail as milk-glass, now subject to shatter, she appealed to Dakar's humanity. 'You're still holding Arithon's oath of permission! Lay down wards to ensure his defence. I'll handle his subsequent anger. Hurt and humiliation can be assuaged. But heed what I say for this hour, at least. You will drive us mad if you force us to separate.'