The Ships of Merior (74 page)

Braced like still iron as the blow fell, his unbound scabs crusted to discomfort, Arithon gave way but one step.

In vicious approval, Alland’s earl finished, ‘Master them, mage, if you can. For by Ath, they’re a bloodthirsty bunch. All week they’ve been vying for the chance to be first to stake out your carcass for the ravens.’

‘Despite your pledged life as my surety?’ Arithon’s bow answered cold as a slicked glint of steel. The rent and bloodied edges of his shirt fluttered, plucked by the pine-scented breeze which flowed over the quarry’s far rim. Above jumbled stones clothed over in creepers, the sky paled to lavender, stippled by faint early stars.

Erlien assumed the high seat, a flat-topped boulder set apart by a woven red throw rug. Replete as a sun-warmed adder, he surveyed his disgruntled pack of clan chiefs and chuckled. ‘ ‘Ware Torbrand’s temper. I’ve tasted its sting. Rathain’s royal line might breed runt-sized, but there’s mettle enough for all that. His Grace has come here to bring warning. By right of arms, he’s earned his chance to speak.’

Arithon did not sit, but strode into the cleared ground by the fire. His footfall made scarcely any sound, even over washed gravel tailings. Splashed in the copper play of firelight, he was a form rendered in planes and shadow, the hawk-sharp angles of cheekbone and chin seared into profile against the gloom. His glance raked over the hardbitten company who waited to hear him bearing weapons and bows, and no small measure of distrust. Arrogance bracketed one elder’s mouth; hard patience stiffened another’s back. A flaxen-haired woman near the sidelines stared in frank curiosity, while others projected unsettled hostility on faces lined like worn leather from lifelong exposure to southern sunlight.

Exposed on all quarters to unfriendly stares, Arithon would not be hurried. He measured them all, to the last, most inimical granddame, until not a clan chief among them could mistake the stamp of his presence.

This prince was s’Ffalenn, and touched bitter by his past, and above any other thing, dangerous.

Run short of patience since his trial at swordpoint, Arithon plunged straight to the crux. ‘A war host thirty-five thousand strong is on the march to the coast of Minderl Bay. Although the feal clans of Rathain have been given my leave to cause their companies delay as they can, without additional intervention, the army could put to sea before winter. A fleet of galleys for transport is already mustering at Werpoint.’

He let no shred of sorrow show for the fact that Lord Jieret and his war captain were belike to use his royal sanction to spill townborn blood in punishing revenge for past losses.

Focused at need on necessities, Arithon let the chisel-cut buttresses of sandstone throw back the temper in his voice. ‘If any portion of this army wins through, they’ll eventually sail here to All and. I’ve undertaken to escape, self-sufficient to sea by that hour. My departure should draw any threat away with me. But the best laid plans are not enough. The curse Desh-thiere has woven over me is remorseless, a compulsion inflicted without quarter. I would have you understand what that means.’

Evoked to a masterbard’s command over language, he described the fearful loss of control he had suffered, when, on the banks of Tal Quorin, he had come to face his half-brother. The moment, wrenched out of harrowing memory, when nothing and no one had mattered; when the last of his integrity had been torn away and undone, consumed by a storm of blank hatred. Terror remained. The truth could not be glossed over or evaded. He would have sacrificed all without compunction, from the green growing land to the life of his last feal
clansman to meet the curse’s insatiable demand for the life of Lysaer s’Ilessid. While the geas held sway, all his love and conscience and humanity could be twisted to count for nothing at all.

In the bleak depths of nightmares, Arithon still tasted the poisoned ecstasy which had gripped him through that past second in time. Once, his half-brother’s life had lain in his hand to crush without mercy, without thought.

Only young Jieret’s intervention had averted irremediable disaster.

The compulsion I bear lies beyond sane control,’ the Master of Shadow said in summary. His forced, iron stillness lent a civilized mask over scouring humiliation. Through every day that he woke and breathed, he fought to withstand the vicious irony: despite his most diligent effort, the horror might happen again.

‘If I chance to be cornered,’ Arithon finished. ‘If I should once encounter my half-brother on the field, my actions will brook no conscience. Shadows, sorcery, or human lives, whatever lies to hand will be seized as a means to wreak destruction. Lysaer’s obsession with my death will stop at nothing, and I am mindful this is your land. The scope of the peril I may draw here is without precedence, and I’ve come to entreat your clans to withdraw to safety until this pass is finished. I’ve made plans as I may to distance myself from my enemy, but there can be no guarantees. Before the drive of the Mistwraith’s curse, my best-laid strategy could run afoul.’

The stunned and thinking silence that gripped the council circle lasted for scarcely a heartbeat.

‘You can’t expect us to turn tail!’ snapped a frost-haired scout on the fringes. The false prince murdered his
caithdein.
Before we see his annexed war host run riot through our territory, we’d sooner quash their effort at the start.’

Shouts hailed back in agreement. ‘Who needs foreign
headhunters riding for scalps here in Alland! Even without their interference, an army that size would strip the land as it passes.’

Braced for the wrong sort of argument, Arithon rounded on Lord Erlien in incredulous, exasperated dismay. ‘Are your elders all deaf? Have none of them heeded a single word I’ve said?’

The regent of the realm twitched his huge shoulders the way a wolf might shrug away flies. ‘For Shand, we judge as we see fit.’

‘If you’re offering help to fan the fires of this war, I refuse you.’ Scalded to impatience, Arithon flung back an ultimatum. ‘This time, I’ll give townsmen no cause at all to link my name with clan defenders.’

Erlien stretched, unbiddably tempered in mischief. ‘In that case, my friend, you should’ve lost a certain sword fight.’

There was more; a depthless black malice gleamed in the clan chief’s eyes, even through the shifting play of firelight.

‘You’ve cause to oppose Lysaer already, I see,’ Arithon probed in hedged caution.

‘Prince Lysaer’s no clansman’s friend,’ Alland’s high earl allowed. ‘Not since he proclaimed and enforced the execution of Tysan’s sworn
caithdein.’
Sharp enough to note the Shadow Master’s catch of grief, he added, ‘You’re no uninvolved bystander. Clan news passes more swiftly than before. The affray by Tal Quorin saw to that.’

A locked moment passed while Shand’s chieftains looked on. Then Erlien grinned like a shark and confessed to Arithon, ‘I drew steel in addition to address a complaint on behalf of the
caithdein
of Melhalla. Your attack on Duke Bransian’s armoury at Alestron was unprovoked, and against one of her feal vassals. Since you crossed into Shand, by kingdom law, form demanded her claim should pass to me.’

‘Oh Ath,’ said Arithon, suddenly laughing. ‘I
thought
that’s why you tried to take my head.’ He pressed a forearm to his stinging ribs, rueful enough to be honest. ‘Your ally should get her facts straight, though. That wasn’t an attack. I had a charge that turned awry to lend help with Fellowship business.’

Erlien’s smile stretched wider. ‘Well, Prince, for my part, by right of arms, you’re acquitted. I found out well enough. You don’t use your sorcery for spite. The s’Brydion line always did have a nose for foolish trouble. When Duke Bransian’s liege lady asks, I shall say you disarmed me, yet mind well: Lysaer s’Ilessid may have revoked his right to safe conduct, but the s’Brydion of Alestron are clanblood. Should that hawk come to roost in a nest outside your favour, the duke’s within his rights to claim your life.’

‘Should he come to me for due reckoning,’ Arithon said dryly, ‘I will answer him fairly on my own.’

Satisfied at last to dispense with past grudges, Lord Erlien stretched the kinks from his shoulders. His slant-eyed glance of appreciation encompassed Arithon’s too-straight stance. The prince looked more than ever like a boy who had suffered a beating, each tender move considered in advance to minimize stiffness and discomfort. ‘Well, be advised to give Alestron wide berth until your scabs heal.’ Enjoying Arithon’s glare of black rancour he added, ‘Where are you bound in that toy of a sloop, after you leave our forest?’

A log fell. The sullen leap of sparks flicked a dancing, hot gleam in the depths of Arithon’s eyes. ‘North.’ A corner of his mouth crawled up. ‘Why rely on the fickle course of storms? I’d a mind instead to try to turn Lysaer’s fleet before he can sail from Werpoint harbour.’

Erlien sank his knuckles in black beard and gave his chin a vigorous scratch. ‘Well you’re not my sworn prince. That being beyond your power to change, you
lack any grounds to deny my clansmen their due share of the fun should the Fatemaster turn your plots astray. If you’ve got a mind to stir a hornet’s nest through sabotage, let me tell you, in Shand, we’re crack experts at cattle raids.’

Indeed, armies could not move, even by galley, without sustenance in the form of beasts. A whoop erupted from a clan lord. Someone else shouted for a cask to be broached. With a burgeoning flare of enthusiasm, leather jacks were fetched out, and someone unrolled a dogeared set of charts from a saddle pack. Played across by moving shadows as the chiefs he commanded plunged headlong into plans for their most cherished pastime, Erlien summed up in complacence, ‘Yon false prince from Tysan can recruit his fine army as he pleases. He may find it tough to invade foreign country if his men have nothing to eat.’

Arithon’s scathing rebuttal was forestalled as a scout in a braided leather vest dug his sore ribs in laughing sympathy. ‘Accept your lot and be merry. Anyone who bests our clan chief at swords, Lord Erlien adopts as a brother.’

Once started, the idea of resistance gained momentum with wild enthusiasm. While the fire collapsed to red embers, the celebration grew rowdy to cement shared friendship and genius. A half-drunken contest at archery commenced with a torch on a pole as a target. The air gained a taint of singed fletching, and silver changed hands in spirited wagers as contestants compared bows and cracked disparaging remarks. Erlien’s clan lords drew lots and shot against a vicious and inventive interference to spoil the aim of close rivals.

No one noticed until the cask reached the lees that Arithon s’Ffalenn had left their company.

The band of scouts dispatched to the shore in haste brought back their belated report:
Talliarthe
had sailed, most surely under cover of shadow. Despite four men
set as sentries, the cove where she had anchored lay black and empty under the moon.

Erlien s’Taleyn, High Earl of Alland, received the news with a head-shaking, throaty spill of laughter. ‘Dharkaron himself! Should yon Shadow Master think we are quits after he’s fairly disarmed me in a fight, he shall in due time be shown better. If this false prince, Lysaer, and his war host plies south, we shall give him sharp welcome, with or without s’Ffalenn sanction!’

As near as Koriani scrying could determine, the Fellowship of Seven met the imminent collapse of the peace with indifference, despite the fact that Athera’s royal lines were their own irresponsible creation. While war against the Shadow Master mounted to a certainty, the sorcerers kept close in their own affairs, as reticent as they had ever been at the time Etarra was abandoned to the destruction unleashed by Desh-thiere’s curse.

Whatever crisis had shaken them to mount an earth-shaking conjury from Althain Tower on the force of the past summer’s solstice, the cause continued to elude the most diligent Koriani seers.

The mood of their Prime Enchantress grew brittle under the pressure as events outpaced the scope of her informants.

Where once the Great Waystone had enabled her Senior Circle to track the Fellowship’s intent, now, they could only hurl probes and futile auguries against impenetrable wards. When Sethvir of Althain chose secrecy, he could circle his tower in guardspells as opaque as Paravian ironwork.

Tenaciously unwilling to leave the passions of
geas-cursed princes to run their fell course unremarked, at the head of an order founded on principles of merciful intervention, Morriel Prime settled in for autumn equinox at the orphan’s hostel maintained in the coastal fortress at Whitehold. Situated where the flats of a lowland peninsula jutted north into Eltair Bay, the high, pale buttresses of the citadel’s inner ward shaded a cobbled courtyard that rang to the shouts of parentless children by day. By night, the high, mortised walls contained the chalked circles and candles laid out for spell rites performed in seasonal rhythms under starlight. If the sentries posted over the gatehouse were troubled by the uncanny vibrations of sealed ritual, they were bound to withhold their complaint.

Since history held that a former Senior Circle had once saved the city from flooding under a tidal surge through the might of a winter storm, Whitehold’s welcome toward the enchantresses remained an entrenched tradition. The orphanage over the years had pre-empted the brick mansions on both sides of the narrow street.

The Prime commandeered a high, pillared chamber, once the solar of a rich shipping merchant. Rows of paned casements aflood with east sunlight warmed the damp air on clear mornings. The view overlooked the strand. Beyond the workaday clutter of lighters beached like seined fish on the sands, the bearded combers hurled themselves in ranks of filigreed foam and exploding spray. Vacant mooring buoys beaded the heave of leaden waters. Every galley available for charter had sailed north to Werpoint to serve Lysaer s’Ilessid as troop transport.

Morriel basked in the windowseat to ease the cruel ache in her joints. Gone were the days when she could meditate without the distracting, soft comfort of cushions. Intolerant of cold, less patient with setbacks, she forbade the attendance of her First Senior since Elaira’s failure to establish herself as Arithon’s mistress. On the night the younger initiate had unmasked the
man’s defences and roused him to passion, the direct force of his character coupled with s’Ffalenn compassion had shocked a signal the clear length of the seventh lane.