Or demanding. Or rude.’
‘Intrusive,’ Elaira corrected, and laughed. Flushed, she bent and accepted the bloom, her uncovered remedies left until later. ‘Should I also thank your Fellowship for a scandalous hand in the prisoner’s release?’ Her cross-grained concern was not overlooked, however she strove to stay circumspect.
‘We broke none of our covenant!’ Kharadmon snapped. ‘Would that we had, and years earlier!’
No need to expound upon his sudden rage: on-going for millennia, the sparring enmity between Fellowship Sorcerers and Koriani Matriarchs. A foregone conclusion, that the long, vicious pitch of the order’s rivalry must entangle the pawn just wrested away from the covetous Prime’s close control.
‘You can protect him?’ Elaira pressed gently.
Kharadmon dissolved into a self-contained whirlwind that whipped up a cyclone of ice-crystals. ‘Asandir was forced to swear! He laid down an oath by the witness of stone, of Fellowship noninterference. Damn your Prime’s machinations to Sithaer! The terms that completed her claim of debt towards the Crown of Rathain have extracted that ruthless stay!’
Which bad news delivered a blow to weaken the knees. Elaira drew in a bracing breath. Under the astringent blue sky of altitude, chilled in the pine-scented shade of the rock scarp, she fought for the balance to curb draining fear. If few staunch spirits could match her bold strengths, none equaled the depth of her love for Prince Arithon. Or her steel endurance, as she dared to challenge the turbulent fury repressed by the Sorcerer’s shade. ‘You cannot lift even one finger to help,’ she accused in bald-faced distress. ‘What of the Biedar? Will their shamans stand guard for your prince? Now he’s freed, might they warrant his safety?’
The discorporate mage drifted to a freezing pause. ‘Who knows what might move the desert tribes to act? In this world, who dares to try them? Biedar wisdom lies outside the compact.’
Elaira gaped in dumbfounded surprise. ‘I never imagined! More tellingly,’ she added the moment her paralyzed wits sorted consequence, ‘has that sharp fact escaped the Prime Matriarch?’
‘Oh, past question, she knows.’ Kharadmon’s image unfurled again, smiling with forthright malice. ‘That sore point’s a matter of recorded history, and no secret buried at Althain Tower. The Biedar people came to Athera before the terms of the compact were struck. They set foot in Sanpashir, just ahead of the Fellowship’s promise of surety, which granted the rest of humanity’s right to fair settlement.’
‘How could that happen?’ Elaira asked, stunned. She had never envisioned the paradox!
Kharadmon’s grin displayed wicked humour. ‘Their tribe’s revered elders did not petition for leave through our Fellowship’s auspices. Are you breathing? Here’s the stinging fly in your Matriarch’s cup! Her Biedar counterpart treated for residence directly with the Paravians.’
Staggered dizzy by her upended assumptions, Elaira required more than a moment to measure the implications. She felt as if mountains had moved at a stroke, with every familiar landmark thrown into radical rearrangement. Changed truth arrived as a blast of fresh air, that the latent power possessed by the tribes far outstripped the reach of the Prime Matriarch’s bidding.
‘A bit of a quandary,’ she sympathized to the discorporate spirit, poised in rapt interest before her.
Kharadmon’s corrosive manner turned fierce. ‘Quite.’ Even his Fellowship must be hard-pressed to reconcile the salient question of sovereign authority. Should Sanpashir’s desert-folk choose to exert their enigmatic autonomy, the might behind their least action could throw any power on Athera an untoward wall of obstruction.
‘You don’t know the limits on the tribe’s intentions,’ Elaira needled, point-blank.
‘Your guess would fall under the provenance of Sethvir,’ the Sorcerer evaded with delicacy. ‘Or else be found among the lore kept by Athera’s living Paravians.’
But the creatures he referenced were lost to the world, and such knowledge, a quest of futility. Elaira smothered a frustrated sigh. The Warden of Althain was unlikely to send her the grace of his counsel. Sethvir’s adamant silence had stayed unbroken since the desperate decision forced upon her on a lonely beachhead at Athir two hundred and fifty sad years ago. Naught remained to be said beyond dogged pursuit of what pressed Kharadmon to broach the indelicate point. ‘If the Biedar cannot be trusted to act, how will my beloved defend himself against the vicious designs of my order?’
Kharadmon raised his eyebrows. He had no glib words. Nothing of comfort to soften the blow bestowed by his shattering news. ‘There, rare lady, the inspiration was guided. The Biedar followed after the tactic his Grace himself used at the terrible crux, to spare you.’
‘They displaced his memory?’ Elaira cried, drained white, the rose fallen from her nerveless fingers. ‘Left him blind to himself? How deeply? To set him past reach of a Prime Circle’s scrying…!’ There, her appalled reason faltered.
Kharadmon stated for her, with terrible calm, ‘Arithon’s remembrance had to be stripped. Completely, without reservation. To stay undetected, safely out of sight, he could not have access to the least knowledge of his identity.’
She collapsed to her knees. ‘You’ve thrown him naked before baying wolves with nothing but his primal instincts!’
‘That, and his born gifts, which are not inconsiderable!’ Kharadmon assured, beyond ease. A Sorcerer, and powerful beyond measure, he could but watch and wait, since that bleak encouragement brought no consolation.
Gloved palms pressed to her face, Elaira shuddered as though the pressure of the icy, wet leather might shore up her frail flesh. Some hurts plunged too deep. Alone, she battled for the toe-hold to assay the shaken first step towards recovery.
The Sorcerer’s spirit ached for her struggle, insouciant sarcasm shredded away. Once, he had owned the warmth of human hands. He had loved, and known how to clasp a devastated woman and lend her raw tears the intimate patience of a warm shoulder. Helpless to offer that solace now, he gave her smashed courage his inadequate words. ‘Dear lady. Handfast to Rathain, of us all, you must not lose your heart.’
For in fact, every hope of Arithon’s hale future lay in this enchantress’s unsteady hands. More: the very thread of Athera’s grand mysteries could dwindle, or snap, or perhaps be raised to renewal through her tenacious constancy.
Kharadmon bore witness through her torment. He did not plead. Not while the balance hung trembling, and all that his Fellowship laboured to heal relied on a destiny yet to be claimed. An interval passed, filled by the wind through the snow-laden pines, and the ice-scoured scent of the Storlain glaciers. Inhospitable country, where a proud woman had nursed her solitary pain, clinging to hope with her hands tied. Unbroken then, she could crumble here, with no trusted ally to steady her.
Then Elaira contained herself. Possessed of a dignified calm that outmatched her diminutive resource, she unshuttered her hands and began to remove one soaked glove.
Before she bared her right hand, the Fellowship Sorcerer guessed her desperate retort. No poise could mask the wrench of her regret as she hardened herself to offer back what never in life, or bound service, ought to be returned.
Kharadmon spoke quickly to forestall a decision that could only launch a disaster. ‘Lady! Don’t do this. Did your best beloved not grant you that ring? And has he, since that terrible day, or in his hour of darkest despair, ever asked to rescind his left token?’
‘No,’ Elaira admitted, pinched white. ‘But you know the Prime’s use of me as her personal weapon against him was stopped when he bound his own recall of me beyond reach—’
‘Hush!’ The ghost of the Sorcerer raised a forefinger with admonishment. ‘I’ve seen how you’ve suffered in his Grace’s behalf. My dearest, yes, I know what he sacrificed for your sake! Althain’s Warden has been party to all that you’ve borne through the earth-link wrought by the Paravians. If Sethvir were here now, he would