by Janny Wurts
'I expect you to deliver my sealed writ, nothing more.' Lysaer tipped a nod to acknowledge his two armsmen, then gave an encouraging smile to ease the fresh nerves of his page-boy. 'That inn, the Flocked Starling, should do very well. My company stops there for a bath and a meal, followed up by a change of clothing.'
While the Varens man gaped like a trout, the Light's foolishly sparse retinue reined over to the curb and dismounted. The page took smooth charge of his master's hot horse. Foamed bits and grimed reins brought no disdainful comment, raised as he was at the ploughshare. His birth-born talent was as matter-of-fact. 'I sense nothing amiss, here,' he said after a moment. 'No untoward workings or sorceries.'
Lysaer clapped the boy's shoulder. 'Well done. Carry on.'
The yokel ducked, hiding his blush. He had never known privilege, unlike the silent, paired veterans behind, who once had served as honour guard for Avenor's lost prince. Now, Ranne and Fennick's taciturn competence headed the avatar's personal train. Their appointment had been Sulfin Evend's replacement, after the late, vile strike by cult sorcery destroyed his three elite captains.
Hawk-nosed Ranne never showed second thoughts. His whistle rousted the Flocked Starling's grooms, while his more personable, ruddy companion unbuckled their scant baggage and stayed to attend the unsaddling.
'Don't want your stashed coin rifled out of your gear?' Ranne needled his comrade-in-arms.
'Sweet life, I don't!' Fennick's quick glance appraised the poleaxed rider from Varens, caught still astride in the bustling street. 'Don't rush the occasion to sour my fun, or are you too gutless to try a hen's wager?'
Ranne tipped back his helm, while the master self-named as the Light's Blessed Prince continued discussion with the stalled courier. Then he shrugged and declared the importunate odds: "That we're going to have Tirans declared for the Light before the hour of sundown?'
'Midnight,' corrected Lysaer, who had overheard through the clatter of hooves as the brow-beaten rider spurred off on his errand. 'Well have Tirans after sundown, because her stiff-necked Lord Mayor has too much experience to bow to my overture.'
Which feint of sly statecraft left the Varens courier shamed scarlet under the lion's share of embarrassment. Alone on the carpet before the high council-men ensconced on the governor's dais, he was left standing in his dusty clothes, redolent of horse and greased leather. He did not have an ambassador's grace to disarm the pitched tension before him. The attendant High Magistrate looked furious in his lace. Worse, the suffused ire on the Lord Mayor's face suggested the Light's dispatch sparked a diplomatic explosion.
Packed in volatile ranks on the floor, and parboiled by sun through the windows, the guild ministers steamed in their lappet hats. Their whispered distress stretched the pause, dropped since the moment the finicky secretary had knifed through the Sunwheel seal.
'What appeal is presented?' a guild spokesman ventured across the stuffy atmosphere. 'How daring a claim does this royal presume to impose on our free city of Tirans?'
For answer, the Lord Mayor raised acid-sharp eyes, and instead accosted the courier. 'You know what this says?' Rings sparked to the pitiless snap of a finger against the unreeled parchment.
The tired rider sweated, trapped by the authority lidded under the vaulted ceiling. 'I'm a Varens man, your Worthiness. Routine messenger, only. Not my place to know, far less to opinionate on what's written and sent by my betters.' Which statement admitted no more than the service badge sewn on his jacket.
But the vulture wearing the seneschal's robe lashed back in jaundiced suspicion. 'You could be the Light's dedicate, come under plain clothes.'
'No.' The questioned man shifted, to the chink of rowelled spurs. 'I'm a hired rider, paid by the route. The scrolls in my dispatch pouch bide under seal. The state contents are never my business.'
Nor had the wax been breached beforetime, a fact witnessed by everyone present. First to crack, the town's acrimonious advisor slapped off his velvet hat.
'We're wasting our strategy grilling the messenger! What does the Exalted Prince have the gall to demand?'
The Lord Mayor's cheek twitched. 'That by sundown today, we are to be flying the Sunwheel banner from the most prominent pole on our watchtower.'
'Ultimatum?' The Minister of the Treasury bristled. 'Sheer arrogance!'
'A plea of insanity, more apt to spark war than move us to grant an alliance.' The advisor sniffed. 'Beneath our grace to respond, I suggest.'
'Ignore this? Are you mad?' The dimpled treasurer stabbed out a finger. 'This showman has tied the port towns in silk wraps! They embrace errant creed for a menial bargain that secures their defence against piracy!'
'Then let's hear the last line of that writ!' The armed veteran wearing the garrison's blazon banged the table with his unsheathed dagger. 'We hoist the Light's flag, or else what is threatened?'
'Or nothing,' responded the Lord Mayor, fixed by icy thought in his upright chair. His frown stayed perplexed. 'No ultimatum has been presented. We have no other statement. Just the one sentence, which also poses us an impertinent impasse.' The pause lagged again, while his fish-eyed glare raked over his disgruntled council-men. 'The rank challenge lies here: the questionable banner we've been asked to raise has, thanklessly, not been provided.'
The miserable courier cleared his dry throat. 'Your pardon, Lordships. And no fault, by Varens. But on my ride in, I was also charged to leave a wrapped bundle, addressed to the day's standing gate captain.' Set at risk by the more volatile jab, that the Light's avatar was in fact present in Tirans, unannounced with a retinue of three, the rider settled for malice. 'I don't broach state seals. But a hare-brained fool knows that packet held cloth, set under the Sunwheel blazon.'
'Black Sithaer, the rogue nerve!' pealed the gaunt justiciar.
If the garrison captain stayed his ill temper, the less-disciplined officials heaved to their feet. Amid declaiming shouts, and the chorused hysteria of trade ministers crying for reason, the fire of singed nerves prevailed.
'I will not give way!' The Lord Mayor pounced on the presumptuous parchment and ripped it to fluttering shreds. 'I grant this upstart nothing! Never, for anyone, will we discard our town's pride and independence!'
Then stall diplomatically!' A fat bursar swiped through the small blizzard, ranting, 'Do less, and we're likely to cut ourselves off! Don't forget that the ports supporting the Alliance could freeze our trade by embargo.'
The arms captain howled. 'You would choose out of fear, for the sop of security bought by the gold in your ledgers?'
As the upset devolved to a fist-shaking knot, the dispatch rider ducked in retreat and quietly let himself out. To his novice's eye, the brash avatar had brought the Light's cause no genial accord: just a single, shrewd line that had driven a wedge through Tirans' steadfast high council.
* * *
Word leaked on the tongues of the lackeys and guards. Their talk took wing, that an officious dispatch issued by the Light's muster had demanded outrageous terms and been spurned by the council of Tirans. By then, Lysaer's sly order had Ranne installed in the Flocked Starling's packed tap-room. The beer jack in the man-at-arms' capable hand was scarcely tasted, although he had been at his ease at the trestle for some time. Since the inn yard's grooms had gossiped about his arrival, and marked his acquaintance with the Varens courier, natural curiosity moved the florid bar-keeper to approach his available silence.
'Yon message, just dispatched to our mayor,' he inquired. 'Did you know aught of the contents?'
Ranne dangled the question just long enough for the hush to acquire an edge. Brawny craftsmen and smiths stilled at the bar, and a sweating glazier elbowed two journeyman coopers aside, the better to hear the reply.
'I witnessed the secretary who set the Sunwheel seal,' Ranne admitted with loaded care. 'Hard not to know what the document said. The scribe had penned only one line.'
Jeers, speculation, then ribald encouragement, as hecklers begged Ranne to continue. The w
ise bar-keeper said nothing. Arms folded over his apron, he waited. Few drinkers, shown such undivided attention, could bear to hold out for long.
Ranne sipped his beer. With his dark hair sleeked back from a bath, his fresh cool was a provocation. Challenged, the inn's patrons dug into their pockets. Lysaer's armsman accepted their impromptu kitty, if only to dare Fennick to cram more loose silver into his overstuffed saddle-cloth. 'Just one demand,' Ranne relented, while the near trestles quieted, and a maid's laughter drifted, cut free of droned conversation.
'Is it true the Light's avatar wants a recruiter's rights to flesh out his latest campaign?' a bearded teamster called from the side-lines.
Half-smiling, amused, burly Ranne shook his head. 'Nothing like. The scroll contained the genteel suggestion that the Light's banner, now left with your gate watch, should be raised to fly above Tirans' town standard by sundown.
Damned odd request, I felt at the time. No thought over beer's made much sense of it.'
Now, having roused the crowd's blank astonishment, Ranne raised his jack in salute. He forestalled the rising clamour of questions by gulping the contents, then wiped his moustache, tossed a coin to pay up, and arose with a shrug of apology. "Time to go. There's the master's demand for my service.'
And on cue, Fennick's straw head appeared at the railing that fronted the stair from the upper-floor chambers. The reluctant crowd parted, while across the inn's tap-room, voices exploded in speculation.
Arrived in alert form at the top landing, Ranne cast a glance towards his stalwart companion.
'White diamond,' snapped Fennick, in cryptic summary of Lysaer's current mood. 'He's blithe as an oyster chock-full of new pearls. No one can wring a frown out of him.'
'Not good then,' Ranne murmured. The pair were anything but Lysaer's confidants; just two trustworthy fighters Sulfin Evend had ordered to guard in the uneasy breach. 'Minding the young heir was the happier charge.' For no mind kept pace with the forsaken father; not since Avenor's young prince had decamped to join Ath's adepts. Granted reprieve from a state execution for their lapsed vigilance on that score, the salvaged men-at-arms had been reassigned by their Lord Commander's adamant word. Only a few in the regent's honour guard shared the damaging secret, that their master was warped by the on-going influence of Desh-thiere's curse. They numbered a steadfast handful of officers, and two fighting men snatched from death by a felon's pardon, who formed the frail shield to stem Lysaer's unnatural fits of insanity. If any man could.
'We're not here to shape policy,' Fennick reminded.
In fact, Sulfin Evend's instructions remanded them to the role of observers who would, at need, draw their steel to defend the divine regent's back. Not that any commonplace hazard should have power to threaten the life of the man hailed as avatar.
'Dead is dead,' murmured Ranne, despite his elite skill not liking the prospect of risking a murderous mob.
Fair-skinned and freckled, Fennick's round face was not smiling as he tapped the shut door to the Divine Prince's quarters.
The knock brought the diffident page, who admitted the senior men-at-arms. Inside, late-day sun slanted through the unlatched casements and brightened the inn's threadbare carpet. Lysaer sat at ease, eating bread and stewed chicken. His masking sweat-band and hat were discarded. Golden hair still tarnished with damp from his bath fringed the snowy collar of a fresh shirt. Overtop, he now wore the gilt fire of an emblazoned Sunwheel doublet. The sight arrested vision: even without the Alliance insignia, his presence shouted with the magisterial force of birth-born royalty.
The paired retainers stalled upon entry, challenged by gemstone-blue eyes.
'You question the wisdom of state dress, but no retinue?' Lysaer stated with sanguine charm. His magnanimous gesture offered two chairs, followed up by his striking smile. 'Sit. Eat your fill, share some excellent wine. Since I've paid for the privilege of privacy, we aren't going to need your bristling vigilance until the hour of sundown.'
* * *
While the watchtower with the controversial flag spire lengthened its shadow across the slate roof-tops of Tirans, far to the west, the downs of Atainia hung layered in cloud like a vein of blue jasper. There, the warded stone of Althain Tower cut a stark silhouette, with only one casement illuminated. Candles pooled light where Sethvir languished in his debilitating fight to check the corrosive charge that leaked from destabilized grimwards. His compromised straits had turned for the worse without warning: Asandir's exemplary hold on the Scarpdale vortex had faltered. No means existed to assess the set-back. The Fellowship's field Sorcerer might be hurt, even dying, beyond reach of immediate help.
Althain's Warden endured that concern in fraught silence. From two minor vortices with minimal damage, once again, he had no viable choice but to shoulder the crushing burden of three. The increase already took its sapping toll: his aura displayed the febrile blaze of a spark reduced by a gale-wind. Sethvir maintained his obstinate grip on little more than dedicate will.
'We are not victims,' he reminded, the statement fierce at odds with the suffering etched into the face propped up by heaped pillows.
The draught he addressed took pause by the window, mingling chill with the breeze. 'Say that to Ciladis, wherever he's gone!' Kharadmon snapped, frustrated.
Hands stilled on the coverlet, Althain's Warden sighed. 'Would you be so angry if you thought him lost beyond all recovery?'
'Rage before grief,' the discorporate shade temporized.
Yet his colleague's point set a virulent sting. The posited chance could not be dismissed, that Ciladis might have abandoned their Fellowship's interests: the wounding left by the Paravians' withdrawal could well have broken a spirit beloved for his matchless tenderness.
Kharadmon added, 'Asandir would be first to remind that the gentlest nature is never least powerful.' Then, in ripped sorrow, 'though I'd rather hang trust in the mouth of a fool than wait for the gleam on a pearl to stave off our defeat!'
'No doubt to the pearl's everlasting relief,' Sethvir said, made tart by near-desperate duplicity. He scarcely dared breathe. If his irritable colleague should guess that fresh trouble now embroiled their interests in Scarpdale, the bitter predicament could not be salvaged: even a Fellowship shade could not survive the chaotic flux of an unshielded grimward.
'Surely you haven't come here to rant,' Althain's Warden pressed with weary delicacy.
'No.' Kharadmon had none of Luhaine's stuffy knack for diffusing rough news with a lecture. 'Raiett Raven's effects at Etarra have been searched, down to the last jewelled cloak-pin.' This testy spirit always delivered his impacts headlong. 'My best effort failed. The dragon-skull wards copped from Hanshire's state treasury are still at large in the world. My scour of the empty cult lairs at Etarra found no sign of the coffer that guarded them.'
'The Kralovir never acquired the talismans,' Sethvir agreed, unsurprised. 'If the grey necromancers had ever laid hands on that asset, presumably they would have put it to use?'
Kharadmon's savage eddy set the candle-flames fluttering. 'Davien? Are you daring to suggest the Betrayer's involved? Did he flit in and make off with the contraband before Luhaine and I reached Etarra?'
Sethvir's wide-lashed eyes stayed a vacant, pale turquoise. 'For all your distrust, Davien's never been secretive. He may not pause for leave, but the thrust of his works has always been in the open.'
'My question's not answered!' Kharadmon cracked. 'If not one of us, men who else is left?'
'Not who, but where,' Sethvir defined, too aware of the stick that prospect kicked into the wasp's nest. 'I think we want Luhaine's persistence, if our search must be widened to include Avenor.'
'Lysaer's private treasury!' Kharadmon's vexed presence recoiled. The vault in question lay beneath the caved ruin of Avenor's state hall. The keys never left the false regent's sole possession, even after Lysaer's explosion of light had blasted the keep's lower dungeon to rubble.
'Where else?' Sethvir said in dismal conclusion.
Flame or magma could never destroy the skulls of Athera's great drakes. But the strapped wood and silk that wrapped the arcane instruments under a passive protection would have been torched. Fire also would damage the skulls' jewelled settings, in which case the ghost remnant of four foetal hatchlings might be cut loose in a state of unrest.
'I have not sensed them stirring!' Sethvir added, fast. 'Let Luhaine confirm this before you rant! There's every chance we might not face the disaster of seeing the birth of a new grimward.'
'We need Asandir's hands freed!' Kharadmon skirted the bedside, riffling the blankets. 'I don't trust the Betrayer. Not his wild-card, cavalier handling, nor the means by which he has made himself corporate!'
'Davien hasn't troubled to offer himself, yet,' Sethvir reminded with level simplicity. Eyes like mirrored cloud, he fanned old dissent to further his bald-faced dissembling. Behind conversation, the strain bled him, relentless. While the room seemed to reel with unnatural shadows, Kharadmon rounded, suspicious.
'Ath above, what's gone wrong? What else are you hiding? What crock of ill news? Is your prodding meant to divert me?'
Sethvir snatched command of the blistering pause. 'It's the fool with the torch who picks fights with the wind.' His dead-pan expression might have been chipped from chert. 'I don't have the strength to chase every black vision. The true voice of hope never fades, though without Ciladis, one tends to forget.'
'We're drowning in chaos, while you shoulder a load any three of us would beg to delegate!' Frost on hot iron, Kharadmon added, 'I would take your place.' With no such grace possible, and no opening to challenge the Warden's prostrate regard, he circled again. 'What's left, but Lysaer?'