me!’ Elaira cried, pained. ‘He may never remember. Why should he not be set free of a past that is dangerous unless it stays lost to him? Where I have the bitter-sweet joy of remembrance, he has been left nothing at all! Is my love so small that I cannot let him discover anew what happiness life has to offer? Who will he have at his side, and what caring, unless he finds joy in another companion?’
Kharadmon applied reason, profoundly relieved that his status as spirit disbarred her impulsive appeal for requital. ‘I cannot take charge of an object, except to unmake the thing, stone and setting, which would be a breach of the Major Balance. I cannot revoke your ring’s reason for being, or break the purpose for which it was wrought.’ As she stared at him, stricken, he added, ‘Put straightly, the royal signet of Rathain will not cede me due cause by permission!’
She made a choked sound, but not in protest.
Kharadmon smiled, then. ‘Elaira, lean on your instinct! That ring stays with you, with all it entrusts. Honour the covenant of Arithon’s promise, and guard his intention as sacred!’
She stayed unconvinced. ‘And if I should not?’
The Sorcerer’s ephemeral presence gentled with compassion as he spoke the truth. ‘If you honestly wish to renounce your heart’s beloved, even the Warden of Althain cannot stand as his Grace’s proxy. Should you resolve to cast Arithon off, then hear me! You must face him in person. A vow from a crown’s heir may not be released. With royal heritage invoked, there is no other course, except to return his token directly into Prince Arithon’s hand.’
Elaira stood up. Eyes filled with all of the day’s blazing light, she regarded the high mountain peaks, white and cold as a sword’s edge above her. ‘You feared to add that our paths must stay separate?’ Too well, she perceived the quandary that stifled her future happiness. ‘I dare not meet him, or touch him, or speak, lest for his life’s sake, he should he be prompted to recover his past, prematurely?’
Solitary, left only the shadow of their cherished passion for comfort, Elaira faced her core terror: for too many years, the ring’s custody had burned her lonely heart with bright longing. The withering need for Arithon’s partnership opened a constant wound of stark agony.
For how long? How many more unendurable days and nights must she tread a trackless path that led nowhere?
The Sorcerer’s fraught silence did not presume to salve her with empty platitudes.
Kharadmon bowed, instead. He could do naught else. Ever and always, Elaira’s female wisdom stayed infallible where Arithon’s welfare was concerned. ‘My dear,’ the Sorcerer murmured. ‘You are beyond compare. Among women, no other will match you.’
He recovered the perfect rose from the snow, slipped the stem through the flap on her satchel. And then his discorporate presence was gone, a tacitly bitter-sweet grant of the needful space for inviolate privacy: to weep, as she must, and to come to raw terms with the terrible trial laid on her. She had retreated for over two hundred years to the desolate hardship of these remote mountains. Held out and stayed sane, and endured the hurt of an inconsolable separation. For the world’s sake, and for a crown prince’s safety, Kharadmon could not beseech her for the exigency of his Fellowship’s need or further burden her course for a cause he had no other choice but to champion.
Nothing rested secure. Not while the Prime Matriarch bade to unhinge the compact and grasp the reins of her unconstrained mission barehanded. Arithon, freed, remained the obstructive cipher that promised her downfall. The Black Rose Prophecy still governed his fate: by himself, quite unguarded, he remained the sole stay that promised the restoration of the Fellowship of Seven.
All over again, Kharadmon could not bear to watch as Elaira regrouped her lacerated spirit. As she chose to hold firm in the face of redoubled conflict and uncertainty, she must stand or fall on her own merits.
Autumn 5922
Changes
As Koriani scryers fail to trace the released prisoner, Prime Selidie rages across her defaced floor at Whitehold, ‘Our arcane vision is thwarted, you say? Then we’ll seize the True Sect’s faith as our instrument in Tysan. Send a warning dream to the Light’s High Examiner. Spur him with the notion his calling has come, that past evil wakens from dormancy. Show that a minion of Darkness moves abroad for his priests to destroy!’
Her healer’s work finished by midafternoon, the enchantress Elaira repacks her satchel for a speedy departure: since the Fellowship Sorcerers have disbarred themselves from defending her best beloved, and given the news of the Biedar tribe’s active meddling, she resolves to risk the journey to Sanpashir to measure their wild-card stake in his destiny herself…
‘How can either party withstand the brute course? Worse, Elaira’s just made herself a naked target!’ Kharadmon rails, lately made aware that the Koriathain twist Asandir’s oath to exploit the Light’s zealot religion; from Althain Tower, Sethvir returns a dismal silence, too distraught to weigh the bad odds: which enemy faction will trace Arithon first, if not strike him down in the vulnerable gap, before he rediscovers his natural talent…?
Autumn 5922
II. Vagabond
The last of the hens to be sold from the crate squirmed out of Kerelie’s grasp. The rude creature bolted before her new owner clamped a firm grip on her struggling legs. Lest the customer grumble, or worse, accuse Kerelie as a thieving cheat, the coin just dropped into her cash-box was returned with her regretful apology. No use to pretend that sore need for the paltry half-silver did not matter. The Light’s tithe imposed by Tysan’s high priesthood already claimed the last revenue from the harvest.
Since Tarens was poking about looking idle, he became saddled with the thankless task to recover the runaway fowl. If the useless bird was too scrawny to lay, she possessed enough spiteful fight to take off as though chased by the fell powers of Darkness. Tarens pursued her cackling flight as she darted length and breadth through the stalls of Kelsing’s packed market. Jostled patrons cursed in his wake. A hand-cart of pumpkins upset. Tarens leaped, skidding, through rolling fruit. He elbowed past the irate ring of gawkers. Plunged headlong into the havoc that disrupted the vested priest of the Light at his booming recital of doctrine, while the hen flapped through the audience to outbursts of laughter that upset all pious solemnity.
Tarens missed his next pounce.
Immersed in the impassioned delivery of warnings against the subtle practice of evil, the priest glared daggers down his lofty nose. The hysterical hen back-pedaled, trumpeted in alarm, and scooted beneath the gilt rostrum.
Tarens tugged his forelock with an endearing shrug and mumbled a shamefaced apology. Then he dropped onto hands and knees in the grass. His frantic snatch under the priest’s white silk hem raised a sneeze on the cloyed reek of incense. Mortified beyond care how much he outraged the temple, the crofter damned the pea-brained wits of loose chickens to reap the fell gale winds of Darkness.
The fowl he cursed hiked up ragged wings, squawked like a jammed hinge, and indignantly pelted. Her flight skittered into the candleman’s stall, with Tarens blundering under the rails, fringed with tapers hung by the wicks. Repeatedly clubbed about his reddened ears, he ducked clear, blindly sprinting. The bird raced ahead. She jagged shy of a helpful bystander’s snatch. Plunged into the thick stand of trees at the verge, she vanished into the autumn tangles of burdock.
Tarens swore and ploughed after her, snagging up burrs and dry runners of thorn. If the silly bird thrashed beyond earshot, she would be lost for good. The fact his beset family needed her paltry worth forced him to keep on until dusk made the finicky bird come to roost. Once she tucked her head under her wing for the night, he climbed the tree and snared her barehanded. The shocked fowl emitted a curdling screech. Tarens winced, insulted by a squirt of guano that splattered his hair.
‘Fiends rise and take you!’ he snarled, then blasphemed in earnest as the sky opened into a downpour and drenched him.
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