gift of Sight has nothing to do with the exercise of common sense. You are my heir, girl, and Fellowship chosen. You stay for the weal of the realm.’
‘And Barach? He stays to safeguard our bloodline?’ Jeynsa cut back, but unwisely.
Her father’s hazel eyes assumed the glint of sheared iron. Scarred on hands and forearms by enemy steel in too many deadly skirmishes, he said, very softly, ‘For shame, girl. Beware how you mock.’ His baleful glance shifted, as though to acknowledge someone unseen at her back. ‘You never know who might be listening.’
‘If it’s mother,’ Jeynsa ripped in retort, ‘she can’t claim I’m not just as good with a bow as the scout you took on your last foray.’ Spun on her heel, prepared to do battle on two fronts like a tigress, Jeynsa found herself nose to nose with the image of a portly stranger who wore loomed gray robes, and whose presence shed the immovable chill of an iceberg.
‘Welcome to my lodge tent, Luhaine,’ Earl Jieret greeted the Fellowship Sorcerer. Vindication that fought not to show as a smile flashed white teeth through his beard as he delivered the traditional words of respect. ‘How may we serve the land?’
Jolted to gaping embarrassment, Jeynsa swept to one knee. Her gesture affected no woman’s curtsey, but the humility a future caithdein must show to acknowledge the given hierarchy of old law, that the authority of a Fellowship charter granted her s’Ffalenn liege his right to crown rule in Rathain.
Luhaine accepted her act as apology, his reproof tart enough to ease the sting to young pride. ‘I’m not Asandir, lady. He’s far more likely than me to sanction your hour of heirship.’
Behind her, Earl Jieret jammed his closed knuckles to his mouth, aware as his daughter surged erect that such tactful reprieve was misplaced.
‘Then you’re here as a messenger from Althain’s Warden to send father to Prince Arithon’s side?’ Jeynsa flung back the hair that no one, not even her mother, could convince her to bind in a clan braid. ‘Say I can go.’ Eager, unscarred, she was not yet touched by the grievous sorrows her parents had known at an age even younger than she. ‘I’ve never seen the Teir’s’Ffalenn I’ve been pledged to serve for a lifetime.’
‘Better pray that you don’t meet his Grace for a good many years yet to come!’ Portly and stern, Luhaine shook a schoolmasterish finger. ‘Young lady, take heed. On the hour you swear fealty to Arithon s’Ffalenn, the caithdein, your father, will lie past Fate’s Wheel. That day his duties become yours to shoulder. The tradition has lasted for centuries, unbroken. The heir to the title must never take risks that might leave the high kingdom stewardless.’
‘You stay, Jeynsa,’ said Earl Jieret with granite finality. ‘Barach holds the s’Valerient chieftaincy in my absence. Nor will you cross your older brother’s good sense until you reach your majority.’
‘Well he won’t be twenty for at least one more year,’ Jeynsa lashed back, unmollified. Then the heat that sustained her brash fight bled away. ‘Just come back.’ She clasped her father’s broad shoulders, her embrace as ferocious as her brangling penchant for argument. When she left, straight with prideful clan dignity, she shed no tears. Nor did she glance behind, though she ached for sure knowledge that Sorcerer and caithdein would share their ill tidings without calling her mother in counsel.
After the door flap slapped shut on her heels, Earl Jieret folded his rangy height onto the split log he used for a camp stool. ‘Ath bless that girl’s spirit, Asandir chose her well. Jeynsa’s the only one of my brood with the nerve to withstand s’Ffalenn temper.’ Head cocked, his steady gaze wary in the flare of the pine torch that blazed in a staked iron sconce, he showed no trepidation, even now. ‘Since you’re here, Sorcerer, certain trouble rides the wind. Better say what you came for.’
Luhaine minced no words. ‘You’ve already mustered your clansmen to arms. Had you not, we would face a disaster.’
Jieret yanked out the worn main gauche that, long years in the past, he had blooded to avenge his slain sisters. While his too-steady finger checked the blade’s edge, and the relentless wind mingled the perfume of winter balsam with the brute tang of oiled steel, he addressed his worries with the same headlong brevity. ‘I dreamed with Sight. This month’s full moon will find sunwheel forces on the march across Daon Ramon Barrens. Sometime before thaws, the prey they course will be a lone rider on a flagging horse. The manI saw inthe saddle was my oathsworn prince.’
‘Let things not reach that pass.’ As though a swift plea could stem fate, Luhaine added, ‘I go east across the Skyshiels to give timely warning. Your liege will be urged to seek sanctuary at Ithamon. He will meet you in the East Tower, the black one, whose warding virtue is endurance, and whose binding is held by the Paravian’s concept of true honor. There, guard your liege against Lysaer’s forces. Prepare for a siege. We know as fact the tower’s wards can stem the onslaught of Desh-thiere’s influence. Sethvir believes the oldest defenses may mitigate the madness of the curse. If that hope fails, then his Grace’s life will be yours to secure in any manner you can.’
‘Just how long must my scouts stand down an army?’ Earl Jieret placed the question with the same hammered courage that had been his father’s before him.
The Sorcerer’s image seemed cast from dyed glass, an uncanny contrast to the earthbound man, who listened with unvarnished practicality. ‘The tower will hold, and the weather will stand as your ally. Lay in provisions to last many months. You will suffer a winter such as you have never seen, nor any of your grandfathers before you. Cold and ice will break the Alliance supply lines. You must hold fast until then.’
‘Then your Fellowship is in crisis?’ Earl Jieret waited through a clipped stillness, his hands on the knife gone motionless.
‘More than you imagine. The Koriani Order tried to upset the compact in the course of their Prime Matriarch’s succession.’ Luhaine’s confession resumed, burred rough by weariness as his image thinned toward dissolution. ‘Their spells were contained, but Athera has suffered a magnetic imbalance without precedent. That’s why we can promise the storms will be harsh, and the spring locked in ice until close to the advent of solstice. Summer will be short. Northern crops will be stunted. Can you manage?’
‘As we must.’ Earl Jieret arose, a threading of gray shot through the bonfire russet of his clan braid. ‘Traithe once gave me the more difficult task.’ Anytime, he preferred letting blood with forged steel to the unease of high mystery and magecraft. ‘Tell my liege I will stand his royal guard at Ithamon. Say also, I’ll stake him a flask of my wife’s cherry brandy that my scouts will arrive there before him.’
‘May we meet in better times,’ Luhaine said, ashamed to give such a lame parting.
For this steadfast liegeman, who time and again had risked all for a prince most conspicuous for his absence, any tribute the Sorcerer might offer would carry a sting close to insult. Although Earl Jieret would swear that Prince Arithon’s life held the future hope for his clans, in truth, the bonding between caithdein and sovereign ran deeper than dutiful service. Prince and liegeman shared a love closer than most brothers. For Arithon, that tie had thrice granted salvation from the drive of the Mistwraith’s geas.
A fourth such reprieve seemed an omen to beckon the crone of ill fortune. Yet if Jieret Red-beard shared the same dread, his fears stayed unspoken as he wished the Sorcerer safe passage.
Luhaine left the s’Valerient chieftain to gather his weapons and muster his clan scouts for war. If the Sorcerer prayed for any one thing as he hurtled across the ice-mailed range of the Skyshiels, he asked that the price of this hour’s intervention not end in bloodshed and tragedy.
Beyond the mountains, the snow fell wind-driven, a blinding maelstrom of cyclonic fury lent force by the skewed flow of the lane tides. Firsthand, Luhaine measured the building pressures Sethvir had sensed from Althain Tower. The final crest of the solstice flux would peak inside the half hour. The pending event cast a charge through the air, a dance of compressed light past the range of