Never again would he divide his autonomy under the sway of feminine influence. He had cast off both women pledged to him in marriage, turned from them and denounced their memory. The Mistwraith’s fell madness blighted his future, too murderous an affliction for him to sustain.
Of all the mis-steps with power to wound him, he had lost control: nearly scorched alive the tender innocent pleading to save him. Lysaer rejected the unthinkable liability. He owned no sane means to protect Daliana or spare her from the fate that had destroyed Ellaine and Talith before her.
Lysaer fought venomous self-revulsion, too choked up for words, even had sickness not wrung him wretched.
He staggered forward, snatched the reins without touching her. Disability forced him to lean on the hack to stay upright but did not weaken his besieged defences. He clawed himself astride. Shaky and soaked in febrile sweat, he searched the gloaming for Dakar’s campsite. Though no fire burned to draw unfriendly eyes, he picked out the angular bulk of the dray, with the unhitched team tethered nearby. Lysaer turned his mount’s head in the other direction. Then he dug in his heels and set off at a break-neck gallop without a glance backwards.
Night swallowed him, sultry with the steam vented off the simmering hot springs. He did not slacken pace or guide the horse under him. Reckless, he let his mount’s keener instincts pick the path through treacherous country. Lysaer scarcely cared if he broke his neck. He drove the animal at clattering speed through the craters of hardened caldera, leaped over seams where the rills of old lava flows yawned underfoot. He coughed on the fumes belched from the mud pots, and taunted fate, where the pressurized gush of the geysers seethed in the obsidian shadows. Alone, he need not wrestle to mask the misery of total despair …
Under the ice-chip glitter of stars, her heart crushed, Daliana sank to her knees. Tears fell for the fracture she could not mend. But she did not sob aloud. Failure preferred the night’s silence since Dakar’s vindictive lecture surely would finish her. How many would come to die in the future lay out of her hands, nor might any measure of sore regret lift the gravity of tonight’s miscalculation. Done was done. She had acted as her intuition directed. No matter how dimmed the hope of Lysaer’s long-term healing, she had turned him loose with his spirit intact.
Numb to the bite of the volcanic gravel, she bore the disastrous hurt. She renounced self-pity, straightened, and rose, and gathered the reins of the gelding left to her. Unable to face the Mad Prophet just yet, she laid her wet cheek against the animal’s shoulder.
Lysaer’s cause would not be forsaken. For more than a sealed oath under Asandir’s auspices, she would search the breadth of the five kingdoms for a remedy. “Until I’ve found some way to redeem my liege, before Ath, I will not rest his case.”
“You are worth ten of him,” a dismissive voice snapped from the darkness.
Startlement whirled Daliana volte-face and dislodged the hazel twig pinned through her hair. Half-blinded, she clapped a hand to her belt-knife and braced for a defensive throw.
But the speaker’s stark stillness smothered her impulsive attack.
“Whatever you say, I promised my liege. Nothing else matters.” She drew herself up though the presence before her radiated the might of a Fellowship Sorcerer. “Kharadmon already forewarned that I pursued Lysaer’s better nature in vain.”
Her visitor strode forward. Angular and tall, he wore a belted tunic and simple hose. The lean face, brushed in starlight, was graven by absolute confidence; or else smelted by the flame of an arrogance that brooked no impertinent questioning.
Daliana regarded the dangerous creature last seen in the company of a dragon. The edge had not left him. His attention still blazed like a brand, even cloaked under nightfall.
Davien said, “I am not here to part you from your desire but to offer you means to pursue it.”
Her bitterness echoed off the naked rocks. “How? Lysaer distrusts women! Worse than that, he views affection as a fatal weakness. He won’t abide his deepest dread, that he might fall prey to his vulnerability.”
“Intimacy could bring him down, wide open to enemy leverage.” Davien capped her list, razored with irony. “The greater his love, the more fear of loss, added to the horror he can’t stand the guilt if his cursed nature drives him to murder.”
Daliana leaned on the horse, all the brazen starch shaken out of her. “The honest spirit should panic, in fact.”
The Sorcerer stepped closer. “You’re weak at the knees?” Presumptuously bold, he prised her fisted grip off the bridle reins. “My dear, let go. If the horse strays, I will summon it back for you.”
Escorted aside, nostrils filled with the sulphurous taint ingrained in his clothing, Daliana permitted the steering touch that perched her on a nearby boulder. “How can I possibly keep my sworn charge if my liege allows no one near him?”
“Ah!” Davien straightened. “Is that strictly true?”
Daliana regarded the face notched out of the deep sky above her and conceded the point. “Well, he does have his retinue.” Galled by her defeat, she raised a nervous hand, yanked out the skewed twig, and let her crimped braid tumble over her shoulder. Rewinding the hair to steady herself, and through the stick clamped in her teeth, she carried her share of a dialogue that led nowhere. “My liege will bear no one’s familiarity. He isolates himself through his station. I know he has no one he consults for wise counsel though history records that my forebear Sulfin Evend relied on the steadfast allegiance of his Lordship’s personal valet.”
“A male lackey is invisible in that regard,” Davien agreed, too complacent.
Daliana jammed the hazel shim through her tucked plait and glowered at his insolence. “Yes, I played the lance squire. But not directly for Lysaer, and only at a safe distance. The disguise worked in the crowded confusion of the True Sect’s campaign. I got by, always by feigning to be the malingering servant of somebody else!” Amid the massed host, one face more or less risked little notice, and lazy boys everywhere contrived devious ways to shirk duty.
Davien said nothing. But one booted foot tapped in impatience.
Which cue emptied her chest in bolt-struck epiphany. Daliana shoved straight so hard, the pumice against her braced seat ripped sound cloth, and her braid came unmoored from its fastening. “You couldn’t!”
“Could I not?” The Sorcerer laughed outright. “Ask Dakar. In fact, more than once, your spellbinder stymied himself against my skilled touch for concealment. Although strictly speaking, a masking spell won’t fully address your straits. Illusion can’t blindside a necromancer, or evade the trained Sight of the True Sect’s diviners.” Head cocked, Davien peered down with an intensity to drill through pretence. “How strong are you, really?”
Daliana crossed her arms over her breast, while her heart raced, and dread lanced her viscera.
Once before this, Dakar had warned, “Don’t let him cozen you,” while the ceiling of an inn cellar became ignited by drakefire over their heads.
This Sorcerer’s bargains never were wont to tread the straightforward path. Flesh and blood, breathing, he was not mortal: the air in his company still crackled, unseen, with the volatile flame of a dragon’s live dreaming.
Daliana’s question ground through her tight throat. “What moonstruck scheme are you proposing?”
Davien bent, plucked a thorn cane barehanded, and gave it a vigorous shake. Sparks flew, as though flint had struck steel, and the whisper of fallen leaves pattered his boots. He extended his offering. The stripped stem was not as it had been: a fine lacquered hairpin glistened under the starlight. “Forms can be changed.”
Daliana accepted the perilous gift, finger-tips tracing the refigured wood through the Sorcerer’s resumed explanation.
“You don’t behold trickery, or a disguise. The thorn has not forsaken its nature. The core substance is not shape-shifted.