slackened as though the heat had broiled his wits.
Daliana reached for her billet, galled enough to hammer him senseless.
She lost the chance.
From stunned windless to owlishly rapt, Dakar reversed. “I’ve got an idea.” He surged erect, slapped his forehead, and chortled. “Oh, indeed, yes. My dear! The notion is genius!”
Daliana glowered in suspicion. “What now?”
The Mad Prophet’s smile sparkled with teeth. “You’ve asked all along to stay at Lysaer’s side, a death sentence waiting to happen. But not if I stand that prospect upside down.”
The method was brilliant. Once, Asandir had done the same: wrought a punitive stay that bound Dakar to Arithon’s company with the persistence of a malediction. More, Luhaine had fashioned a similar spell, years later, an obdurate constraint on Fionn Areth’s rebellion, weaving him under protections within the spellbinder’s close proximity. Both approaches opened intriguing possibilities when combined with the homing ciphers stitched into the aura of Asandir’s stallion. Dakar flexed his fingers, empowered by enough sundry knowledge to rig an inventively nasty variation.
“What in Dharkaron’s name are you thinking?” Daliana broke in.
“Bless you, sweetling!” crowed Dakar. “I’m going to tie Lysaer’s presence to you! Give him a leash that extends for three leagues, you can duck beyond range of his rages. He might slip your guard at the whim of his curse, but not bolt out of reach without your complicity.” The spellbinder hitched up his pot-belly with venomous satisfaction. “Ath above, I can’t wait. We can leave this forsaken place, soonest. Just nip off a thread from your clothing and loan me a knife to prick his little finger.”
“No.” Daliana uncoiled from nursing her invalid. “I can’t sanction this plan.”
Dakar shrugged. “Then I’ll seal the craft-work without you.” Undeterred by the scorch of her rage, the spellbinder bore in, “How many more temple war hosts will wreck the peace for your pride? Canon Law will purge more clanbred families, and for what good end, Daliana?”
She did not stand down. Small, scuffed with dirt, and rabidly furious, the minx defended her ground. “Dakar, you can’t. This is not a solution. Your proposal does nothing to bolster my liege’s besieged integrity. Compulsion can’t mend his raw self-esteem! You’ll do naught but destroy the last shred of true spirit if you rope down a man already ridden beyond mercy.”
Dakar slid off the wagon. “Athera cannot afford your squeamish instinct to coddle Lysaer’s cursed madness. You don’t fully grasp the scope of the stakes. Stick now over principle, or hang up on your infatuation, I will the more ruthlessly clip the man’s wings.” The snatched move to unsheathe her belt knife raised only the spiteful slap of his indifference. “Don’t imagine bloodshed will stop my interference.”
“Should I worry?” Daliana retorted. “The moon will fall out of the sky on a wish before my liege grants you permission.”
The spellbinder’s crafty smile stretched wider. “A grand gift, for sure, he’s tossed out of the compact, and also that I’ve been dumped from the upright graces of Fellowship auspice.”
“You daren’t stoop to coercive extortion! That verges upon dark practice!” But as the Mad Prophet braced to take action, Daliana promised, “Try, and I will not rest until I find means to prevent you. I don’t care how many innocents you believe you’ll be saving! The back-lash you cause will strip Lysaer of his humanity and leave us with a monster.”
A man less resolved should have quailed from her smoking glare on him, except the leeway for debate was exhausted. A muffled groan from the wagon-bed warned that their charge recovered his senses.
Dakar eyed the tousled blond head sheltered by such untoward sentiment. “You wanted an ice pack to ease his bashed skull? Then strike me a fire to heat a fresh tisane. We need that valerian infusion, right quick.”
“We? No.” Daliana leaped down from the tail-board, as determined a bundle of feminine rage as ever set off to thwart destiny. “Do the scut work yourself since you fear to burn!”
Forthwith, she claimed a pair of saddle packs and began to stockpile provisions. “I’ll be taking two horses and Lysaer. You can test the mettle of Asandir’s mark and try to stop me at your peril.”
Dakar turned his back. However brave, Daliana’s resolve would not upset his decision. Neither did he revel in her misery, or cave in to the tears she swiped off her grimed cheeks as she tacked and loaded the pick of the available string. Stressed as she was by rough living, the spellbinder weighed what had to be done with a cold heart and ironclad purpose.
Forget the fair fight. Past service to Arithon s’Ffalenn gave him the long view and the scars of unpleasant experience: a sharp adversary corrupted by Desh-thiere’s geas never spurned dirty tactics. First chance, Lysaer would snatch the advantage against any fool who volunteered as his chaperone.
“Pack the valerian as you wish,” Dakar said. “Or leave me a horse and a share of the stores and drive off with the wagon.”
When Daliana spurned his effort to ease her lot, the spellbinder hunched stoic shoulders and stumped off into the dazzle of heat-waves. Discomfort compounded his sullen mood. The flint rock burned through his boot soles. Insects whirred aloft upon glassine wings from the desiccate cracks in the boulders. Through the scrape of his stumbling strides, he deafened himself to the ring of shod hooves, receding. Onwards, he plunged from the glare of midday into the abyss of shade beneath the high arch that buttressed the nearest rock stack.
The bounce of a kicked stone cracked an echo that died. Dakar sucked a vexed breath, pulled up short while his eyesight adjusted. He required a flat surface, less reactive to flux charge, to lay down meticulous boundaries. Care must be taken with a work not in form: no chance influence should warp his intent.
“Did you believe your twisted bumbling wasn’t noisy enough to draw notice?” admonished a voice from the desert silence.
Brought face-to-face with the tall shadow that detached from the gloom, Dakar discerned the faint emanation flared off of uncanny embroidery. The impression of a gaunt face, framed in a streaked tumble of shoulder-length hair crossed the keyhole behind, and punch-cut the figure into silhouette.
“Davien!” the spellbinder yelped. “Did Sethvir send you as my keeper or have you come to champion Daliana’s appeal?”
The Sorcerer also known as the Betrayer took pause, a stalking lynx against the parched vista behind him. “I happened to be afoot in the vicinity.”
Dakar swallowed back his panicked consternation. Recall surfaced too late, that the dragon Seshkrozchiel had denned up in the volcanic spur of the Storlains to hibernate. The nonchalance behind Davien’s phrase distilled into visceral dread.
Lately released from the thrall of the drake, the most untrustworthy of the Fellowship Sorcerers meddled here as a radical free agent.
Amused, Davien rested his foot on a boulder, crossed his arms on his thigh, and leaned forward. “I’m not ready to answer Sethvir’s cry for peace. Here’s the pot and the kettle, both sooted black. You seem hell-bent to grant Althain’s Warden due grounds to ban you from the compact.”
Dakar forced his lungs to inflate. “After my choices killed High King Gestry, does another transgression even signify?”
“Perhaps.” Davien straightened. Not impervious, his person showed the frayed snags and cinder burns from mean travel through Scarpdale’s rough country. “Your first course of action salvaged Arithon’s life and threw no one to grief against their will. Don’t overplay your importance, besides. The strengthened potency of the flux lines was far more to blame for Gestry’s untimely demise.”
“No one else could have pressured that wild-card play,” Dakar insisted. “Since I wasn’t condemned for up-ending Asandir’s standing