he endured his subordinate’s handling in withdrawn reserve.
Dace fretted, hoping the rude setting excused his inexperience; while under fog, a port only know at second hand through its history came awake at the water-front.
High and sweet, the temple bells sounded carillons, stitched by the cries of hawkers and gulls, female laughter, and swearing stevedores. Staccato clacks spoke of board shutters being thrown back on the wharf-side trinket stalls. Miralt had been settled since the early Third Age. Its wide crescent harbour cut into the Camris headland, ice-bound through the winter. The seasonal bloom of brisk trade swarmed over the bones of what had been, for centuries, a back-country settlement: until the Light’s avatar first disclosed his divine mission in the open street.
A riot sparked off by a captured assassin had been quelled, and a ravening mob stunned into an awed retreat. Yet the spectacular display of Light unleashed then did not explain Lysaer’s reticence. His brooding more likely stemmed from the time of the Great Schism recorded in True Sect scripture.
The brutal, eye-witness memoir penned in Sulfin Evend’s personal journals provided perspective. The liegeman who had stood his adamant ground for Lysaer’s sanity became a contentious target after the fall of Alestron. The fighting man’s rankled script described his battle-worn troops, denied victory spoils to shoulder the refugee crisis incited by the wrathful dragon that unleashed a fire-storm on Avenor. Amid the smoking ruin, Sulfin Evend’s account sketched the priesthood’s seditious influence. Gouged pen-strokes reflected his efforts to blunt the influence of Desh-thiere’s curse: and which prevailed. Lysaer’s sensible policy had backed Fellowship edict and jilted the priesthood’s demand to rebuild Avenor’s slagged ruin.
But the triumph had incurred an unthinkable price.
Then and now, gadded by the Mistwraith’s directive, Lysaer wrestled to curb a fanatically entrenched religion. Again, his pursuit of responsible justice might tip zealotry over the brink.
Once, Sulfin Evend’s command of armed force had contained the volatile storm like a lightning-rod. His muscular will had transplanted the High Temple’s disputed authority to Erdane. Statecraft and political acumen tempered the Light’s runaway creed, until his heroic, relentless support became undermined by filthy rumours. The jackal pack of his rivals had scented blood in the cries of apostasy from the priests, until charges of collaboration with Fellowship sorcery named him the Heretic Betrayer.
Dace laid aside the razor and shivered. The perils bequeathed by that past had grown teeth, with centuries of Canon doctrine given a deadlier reach. The battle about to be joined held no quarter if, under the fresh threat of curse-born madness, Lysaer resumed his brash fight to disband the religion.
Dace reached for the towel, awake to the fury that hardened the shaved jaw-line he blotted dry. The sen Evend descendant could only mourn the ancestral courage that once had foiled the repeated forays of hired assassins. The terrible price spoke yet on the page where Sulfin Evend’s firm grasp on the pen was cut off, reft by the poisoned cup that the priests’ machinations arranged for his downfall.
Etarran history recorded the aftermath, stripped of the desolate grief: of the beleaguered flight out of Tysan, while Sulfin Evend lay comatose, undone by the near-fatal attack, which left him blinded and crippled with palsy.
The cryptic summary resumed months later, the fallen champion’s slurred words recorded by a punctilious scribe. Compiled for posterity, that piercing entry shouldered the blame for the mis-step that cost Lysaer his control over the Light’s dedicate troops.
No chronicle spoke of the intimate strain, or the fear, as Lysaer had defied the swords of the temple war host to salvage the life of his helpless friend. True Sect scripture enshrined only the poisoned account of the Heretic Betrayer’s corrupted influence. Canon history of the Great Schism insisted that Lysaer s’Ilessid had turned apostate to the Light’s cause.
By unadorned truth, the withdrawal from Erdane had been triggered by ambush, and the harried retreat across Camris, a feat to save Sulfin Evend, condemned by a Sunwheel decree and at risk of being savaged by a zealot mob. Lysaer had been forced to wield light against his deluded pursuit. When the galley he seized escaped to sea out of Miralt, she had rowed into the gales of late autumn, while the handful of trustworthy officers forestalled her pursuit at the dock.
Of the bravest and best, none had survived to reach haven under the governor’s law at Etarra.
Oppressed by that history, Dace oiled the razor, and heaved the bucket of suds over the lee-side rail. No surprise, that his liege’s expression stayed wooden. For Lysaer, the clangour of temple bells and the northcoast combers breaking like slivered glass bespoke the ghosts of his sacrificed dead.
On this day, ruthlessly living, the faithful had multiplied a thousandfold. The True Sect Canon ruled Miralt, the established order emerged into view as the early mist lifted.
The dazzle of gold winkled first, where slant sunlight polished the egg-shell domes gilded over by temple revenue. Visible next, the milk outlines of buildings, block towers, and the spindled rails of the galleries crowning the headland in many-tiered splendour. Dull trade port no longer, the Light’s worship had repaved the town in palatial opulence, a necklace that shimmered like opal along the wide curve of the harbour. Shrines and sanctuaries and hostels overlooked the bleached wharves, where, in summer, the galleys of the Sunwheel priesthood rocked gently, their pencilled spars varnished citrine and amber, and rigging strung with white pennants streamed gold fringe like the glister of sparkling wine.
A fair vista, nested with coiled adders, and an insane prospect for a covert venture.
Breeze shivered the dew from the lines. Through the spangle of droplets, a skiff drawn up alongside delivered the pilot to steer the squat lugger to her paid dockage.
“I’ll be changing clothes,” Lysaer informed his servant. “Brush up a doublet and trousers tailored in plain cloth of respectable quality. Afterward, if you please, have my luggage strapped up and brought topside for landing.”
Lysaer’s choice to enter Miralt without artifice made tactical sense to his valet. The jewels sold off to hire his passage left coin enough for a respectable boarding-house lodging. Discarded also, the pretext of station, where glittering ornament would have attracted undue envy and curiosity. Yet modest trappings and impeccable manners allowed an unknown young man of good looks into the upper-crust practice hall. Lysaer was admitted to the stylish baths frequented by the unmarried dedicates and the idle rich.
Dace observed the seamless acceptance, primly composed, from the side-lines. A proper clean towel draped on his arm and his master’s kit parked at his feet, he was skirted like furniture by the more stylish servants. Many an impoverished aristocrat visited Miralt for holy penance, attended by faithful old serving-men.
But even plain cambric and linen could not reduce Lysaer to anonymity. His skill with the sword sparked whispered comments. Dace adhered to propriety. He disclosed nothing to sate the curious bystanders though ragged nerves made him sweat when an off-hand remark likened his master’s fair grace to the beauty of the divine avatar. Since Lysaer never mentioned his background, his admirers speculated on their own.
“Likely he’s from a family with too many sons and limited prospects,” suggested the whiskered fellow who managed the idlers’ wagers.
Heads nodded. Many an ambitious sprig came to Miralt chasing his youthful dreams. Scholarly hopefuls applied to the Light’s priests at the temple. The fiery idealists who craved adventure flaunted their prowess at arms, where their mettle might earn them a dedicate captaincy.
“That one needn’t lather himself in the ranks,” a wistful bravo observed.
His stout companion added a smirk. “Handsome enough to break hearts as he is? The right bed or marriage could better his station without risking his pretty neck.”
“Do you think?” another gallant remarked. “Those lovely blue eyes might string the ladies along. That heiress from Erdane whose father dropped buckets of gold as a temple offering? Well, she tried to plaster herself to his side. Got her charms refused