Fugitive Prince (3 page)
Authors: Janny Wurts
“Daelion avert!” His fury bored into the enchantress.
“What’s her kind doing here!”
“Never mind,” Elaira said quickly. She had expected hostility in some form or other, since Kaid had appeared on her doorstep. “I’ll be on my way directly.” She arose, tipped the filth in the basin into the slop jar beside the birthing stool, then turned her back, stepped over the pile of wadded, bloody towels, to repack her things in her satchel. Her part was done. The child’s danger was past. If the man was illmannered enough to dare set his hand on her, he would regret the presumption.
Like the whine of a whip, the seeress protested. “The
fferedon’li
will not go just yet. Not until the child’s augury is spoken.” Across the
irate glower of the husband, the trembling, diffident anxiety of the mother, the crone arose from her corner, moved, an animate bundle of shawls, to present her appeal last to the midwife. “Tempt no ill luck. There’s a sacrifice owed by this babe. He would have gained no firm foothold in this world at all, if not for the hand of the
fferedon’li.”
The husband swore with expressive, fresh venom, his glare still locked on the enchantress.
Comprehension dawned late, like a douse of chill water, or a sudden fall through thin ice. Elaira understood where the brittle, steel tension had sprung from. Her heart leaped at once to deny her own part. “I wish nothing, no tie for my service!” Through the longer, louder wails of the newborn, her voice clashed in rising dissent. “Let the boy’s life hold to its own course, with no interference from me.”
“Ye know better, gifted lady!” the seeress said, tart. “The debt against this young spirit is a fair one, and to refuse his given charge, a sign of ill favor and disrespect.”
The father spun about, his bellow of rebuttal cut short by more withering reprimand. “Foolish man! Were ye raised by a nanny goat? Here’s a strong son ye’ll have, perhaps to beget other living children of your line! Now let the augury say what he’s to grow and become. He may bear your blood. Yet the fate he’ll be asked in payment for his birth is nothing else but his own!”
Silent, even mollified, for it had been her summons which had brought Elaira to the steading, the midwife lifted the naked, newborn babe, wiped clean of the fluids of birthing. A rutched comb of dark hair arched in a cowlick over the vulnerable crown of his skull. His face was rosy, suffused with crying, and his miniature feet lashed the air in what seemed an impotent echo of the father’s outrage.
At the dry, cool touch of the seeress’s hands his wails missed their rhythm and silenced. The crone raised the boy’s small body. Her eyes were dark brown, clear-sighted and deep, schooled to reflect the infinite whole, from which grand source came the spark to animate all that held shape in creation. Watching the finespun aura of spirit light flare up as the woman tapped into her prescience, Elaira experienced both relief and sharp dread. The old woman’s Sight was no sham, but an untrammeled channel attuned to the resonance of true mystery.
Then the words came, sonorous and full, to augur the coil of the future; they were directed, not to the babe’s kin, but to Elaira.
“One child, four possible fates, looped through the thread of his life span. He will grow to reach manhood. Should he die in fire, none suffers but he. Yours to choose when that time comes,
Fferedon’li.
Should he die on salt water, the one ye love most falls beside him.
Should he die landbound, in crossed steel and smoke, the same one ye cherish survives, but betrayed. Yet should this child’s days extend to old age, first the five kingdoms, then the whole world will plunge into darkness, never to see sunlight or redemption. Your burden to choose in the hour of trial,
Fferedon’li,
and this child’s to give, the natural death or the sacrifice. Let him be called Fionn Areth Caid-an.” The ancient seeress lowered the babe, the hard spark fading from her eyes as she closed her final line. “Let his training be for the sword, for his path takes him far from Araethura.”
Elaira stared transfixed at the child just born and Named. She wished, beyond recourse, that her hand had slipped in its office, or that the dull-witted roan had mired in some drifted-over streamlet and fallen. Better, surely, if she had arrived too late, and this herder’s son had gained no saving help to survive his transition into life. As her wits shuddered free of paralysis, the enchantress could not shake off a terrible, pending burden of remorse. The feeling which harrowed her lay far removed from the soft, stifled sobs of the mother. Elaira could not react to the rattling slam of the door, as the father stormed out in mute rage, nor to the midwife, murmuring phrases of helpless consolation for the destiny forewarned by the seeress.
The enchantress felt the trained powers of her focus drawn and strained in a web of disbelief. The babe had such tiny, unformed fingers, to have tangled the destiny of the Shadow Master between them, and all he entailed, the misled fears which had raised marching war hosts; the bloodshed and sorrows of an age.
Winter 5647-5648
Far distant from Araethura’s wind-raked downs, in a wainscoted anteroom trimmed in gilt and agleam with pristine wax candles, an immaculate steward in blue-and-gold livery bowed to King Eldir’s ambassador. “His Grace, the Prince of the Light, will see you now.”
The visiting dignitary on the cushioned bench arose at the royal summons. A middle-aged man of spare bones and blunt demeanor, he seemed unremarkable for his post. Nor did he display the stylish, warm manner which trademarked the gifted statesman. Clad still in the travel-splashed broadcloth he had worn from the mired winter harborside, he followed the servant through the massive, carved doors, then down the echoing corridor which led to Avenor’s hall of state. Cold light, reflected off a late snowfall, streamed through the lancet windows. Here, no stray sound intruded beyond the measured tap of footsteps upon satin-polished marble.
The palace sanctum where Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid plied the reins of his government lay far removed from the chopped mud of the practice yard, where the handful of veterans returned from campaign drilled their surviving field troops.
No secretaries murmured behind closed doors. A lone drudge polished rows of brass latches, her labors methodically silent. The hush felt inert as the vault of a tomb. Three weeks was too soon for the city to assimilate the impact of a fresh and unalloyed tragedy. The burgeoning industry of Avenor, so magnificently restored, seemed
stalled; as if even the very resonance of power stood mute, stricken numb by the news that even now rocked the five kingdoms.
Of the forty thousand dedicated men sent to war in the rocky scarps of Vastmark, all but ten thousand had died of the strategy unleashed by the Master of Shadow.
The declared neutrality of King Eldir’s realm made those casualties no easier to grapple. The ambassador sent by his liege to shoulder today’s dicey audience was a man appointed for patience, and valued for his skeptical outlook. The outraged grief and shocked nerves he encountered made even simple needs difficult. Since the hour of his arrival, he had weathered a brangle with the seneschal’s undersecretary, and before that, a harbormaster’s flash-point temper, to secure his state galley a close anchorage. He chafed at the pressure. To miscall any small point of diplomacy could spark an unforgiving train of consequence.
For the stakes ran beyond mere potential for bloodshed. The dead-locked struggle between the Prince of the Light and his enigmatic, sworn enemy had widened. Arithon’s works now polarized loyalties, and compromised trade in four kingdoms. Folk named him Spinner of Darkness since Vastmark. Fear of his shadows and rumors of fell sorcery attached to his secretive nature.
Sensitive to the pitfalls in the tidings he carried, the High King’s ambassador reviewed his firm orders. Then his sovereign lord’s entreaty, unequivocal and clear, given upon his departure:
“Your loyalty may come to be tested, and sorely. Lysaer s’Ilessid can be disarmingly persuasive in pursuit of his hatred of Arithon. But the Fellowship Sorcerers grant no credence to his war to destroy the Crown Prince of Rathain. Your errand may well be received in disfavor. Should you find yourself compromised, even imprisoned under wrongful charges, you must keep my realm of Havish uninvolved.”
If the ambassador regretted the burden of his mission, the moment was lost to back down. The steward escorted him through the arched portals which led to Avenor’s state chambers. Masking unease behind a lift of dark eyebrows, for the credentials from his king had been public and formal, the dignitary found himself admitted through a less imposing side door.
In the smaller room used for closed hearings, Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid awaited. He was alone. A less imposing man, unattended, might have been overlooked on the dais, with its massive oak table, hedged by tall chairs with their carved and gilded finials, then these dwarfed in turn by the star and crown tapestry, device of Tysan’s past high kings. The woven device masked the east wall, gold on blue beneath the spooled rail of the second-floor gallery.
Limned by a flood of cold, winter sunlight, this sovereign’s presence filled that lofty well of space as a jewel might rest in a reliquary.
The dignitary from Havish discovered himself staring, forgetful of protocol or the ingrained polish of court ceremony.
Fair, gold hair seemed tipped in leaf silver. The eyes were direct, the clear, unflawed blue of matched aquamarine. Where Lysaer s’Ilessid had always owned a powerful, charismatic male beauty, the Vastmark campaign left him changed. Now, his majesty went beyond poise. As steel smelted down and reforged could emerge from the punishment of hammer and anvil to carry a keener edge, the pain of a massive defeat had tautened his flesh over its framework of bone. Less given to smiling platitudes, he wore the tempered, private stillness of the veteran who has squinted too long over hostile terrain. The strong southland sun, the cruel weather, the indelible grief imprinted by the loss of thirty thousand lives had but rekindled this prince’s resolve; like a lamp set burning on a fuel of sheer faith, to illuminate where a lesser flame would fail.
The ambassador shook off stunned paralysis. He tendered the bow that acknowledged royal bloodline, but implied no stature of rank. The detail struck him as curious: the prince had eschewed to display the sovereign colors of Tysan. Instead he wore a tabard of white silk, trimmed with gold cord, and fastened at the neck with stud diamonds.
Lysaer s’Ilessid began in a brisk form quite altered from the effortless courtesy which trademarked his single, past visit to Havish. “You may sit. I will make no apology. This meeting must be short and private. A gathering of kingdom officials and outside delegates is scheduled to take place after this one. Those who attend have been discreetly handpicked. I hope you’ll consent to be present, both as an independent witness, and as King Eldir’s representative.”
“It is to his Grace of Havish such apology is due.” Blunt features immersed in shrewd thought, the ambassador wondered whether his equerry might have talked over beer in a tavern. Had word of his business reached Lysaer beforetime, today’s air of secrecy boded ill. He perched on a bench, a touch on edge, his words like thin acid before the autocratic whims of royal privilege. “In fact, my appointment concerns an errand for the Fellowship Sorcerers, entrusted to Havish’s keeping.”
“Indeed?” An unexpected irony raised Lysaer’s eyebrows. “That being the case, all the better if our discussion is kept close.” He stepped around his state chair and settled. The stillness in him now
went deeper than patience, went past mere endurance, or the blustering confidence a beaten man raised in game effort to shrug off defeat.
About Lysaer s’Ilessid lay a quiet that towered. His immutable, restrained force made the glare through the casement seem displaced, the hard scintillance of his gold trim and diamonds jarring as a master painter’s slipped brushstroke.
He said, “I make no secret of my bias. The doings of Fellowship mages are no longer welcomed in Tysan.”
The ambassador rejected political wrangling. “Any tie to the Sorcerers is indirect, you shall see. My case concerns the first ransom in gold, raised to free your lady wife. The one which vanished during transit across Mainmere Bay this past summer.”
“Five hundred thousand coin weight,” Lysaer mused with unswerving mildness. “My merchants, who raised the bullion, remember that setback too well.” In phrases wiped clean of residual anger, he added, “That sum was purloined by the Master of Shadow. You bring me word of the contraband? I’m amazed. The Fellowship Sorcerers were nothing if not in cahoots with that blatant act of piracy. Go on.”
The ambassador folded stiff fingers inside the lace of his cuffs. Too circumspect to pass judgment on the doings of mages, he picked his way cautiously. “Your lost gold was returned by Prince Arithon’s hand, and surrendered under Fellowship auspices. By appointment as neutral executor, the crown of Havish will restore the full sum to your Grace’s treasury. The incident, as you claim, went beyond simple theft. The Master of Shadow waylaid your lady’s ransom as a tactic to stall your war host from invasion of Vastmark.”
“Five hundred thousand coin weight in exchange for the time to arrange for thirty thousand deaths.” Lysaer never moved, his seamless detachment enough to raise frost on hot iron. “What price, for the blood that was spilled in Dier Kenton Vale?”
The ambassador sidestepped that baiting insinuation. “The treasure is guarded aboard my state galley, counted and bound under seal by his lordship, the Seneschal of Havish. Upon my receipt of signed documents of discharge, the gold can be consigned to the care of Avenor’s state council.”
No need to prolong the particulars; a writ of acceptance could be drawn up and sent to the harbor by courier. Avenor’s strained resource could scarcely spurn funds, however embarrassing their origin. Havish’s envoy straightened, in haste to exchange due courtesy and depart. He had no authority to stay on as witness to the afternoon’s clandestine council.