tears, but that actually curbed her rebellious need to cast off westland manners and spit on the High Priest’s spotless carpet.
Cerebeld watched his royal guest leave, dispassionate as the sated snake permitting choice prey to go free. While the jingling tread of the attendant men-at-arms receded down the stairwell, he bade the rattled novices on the landing to shut the door to his chamber. Restored to solitude, the Grand High Priest of the Light murmured a purifying prayer, then resumed his morning devotions.
He thumbed open a receptacle in his wrought-dragon chain, removed the filigreed key, then turned the lock on his aumbry. ‘Praise be the Light,’ he murmured as he knelt. His questing touch tripped the recessed latch concealed amid the embossed gold panel. A cavity had been cunningly set into the joinery behind the whale-ivory facing glued to the cupboard door. Inside, shallow niches in a grid were labeled with the names of each city in Rathain. Most remained empty in this hour of need. But the ones for Etarra, Morvain, and Jaelot sheltered small bundles bagged in silk. Cerebeld plucked these out, his handling as reverent as though their contents were living, and irreplaceably fragile.
He transferred the cache to his personal altar, where beeswax candles, sweetened with sandalwood, burned. Four alabaster bowls held his offerings of clear water, cut herbs, and rarefied oil, and the residue of the blood shed in ceremony to reaffirm the sacrificial pledge of his person to the purpose of divine will and Light. Each day, cast prostrate across the sunwheel cushion as he begged intercession and guidance, he renewed his eternal vow.
Fervently trembling, he unwrapped the sacred bundles and withdrew their three figurines of cast wax. Each held a carved likeness, the hair real, snipped from the heads of the persons they represented. Eyes closed in prayer, Cerebeld licked his thumb. He dampened the wax face of each doll with a touch, then stilled, building the receptive inner quiet through which he would channel the Word of the Light. Minutes passed, sealed in the airborne scents of rare oils and the fragrant musk of hot candles. Predawn stillness suspended him, textureless as hung felt, until his mind unfolded into an effortless state of suspension.
Cerebeld waited, patient as the blank pool stilled to mirror the infinite.
Time brought his reward. The first tug of contact was drawn in by the ritual unreeled through the focal point of the wax dolls. Cerebeld hooked the presence of the nearest man first, the young priest who served truth in Morvain. The man slept yet, entangled in dreams, while the sea winds buffeted his casements. Awareness of the Etarran priest reached through next, tinged with the scent of patchouli he used to freshen his linen. That one was wakeful, his thought stream a sibilant murmur of prayer. The third priest, most recently dispatched to Jaelot, remained stalled in Darkling, caught in midjourney when early storms closed the passes. Asleep in a tangle of fusty wool blankets, his need to stretch travel funds kept him stranded in the smoky, dimmed chamber of a second-rate inn built for drovers.
Cerebeld cupped each separately summoned awareness within the stilled vault of his mind. Then he opened the channel that rode with him, always, through unstinting dedication to the Light.
The fervent call of Avenor’s High Priest rode the failing, last shadow of night. His appeal bridged the black waters of Instrell Bay, and, searching beyond, touched the aura of Lysaer s’Ilessid.
Cerebeld immersed in the bliss of divine presence, no longer aware of the body before his draped altar in Avenor. The yawning abyss of human need, all his limiting fears of mortality fell away as he slaked his insatiable thirst for the sacred and became recharged with uplifted purpose. The Divine Prince was spark to his unfired clay. Through self-surrender, his yearning spirit escaped the torpid separation of the flesh. All dread of the Dark, and all terror of sorcery receded; lips parted with unconscious ecstasy, Cerebeld tapped into the radiant source of his avatar’s strength. Abandoned to a fervor that bordered obsession, he basked in the diamond-pure stream of Lysaer s’Ilessid’s just presence.
His tranced mind experienced the same agitation as his Exalted Self paced the plush carpets in the Mayor of Narms’s private guest suite. Quivering now, enthralled in joined vision, the High Priest sent dutiful greeting. ‘Exalted Prince? The hour is come to place the arrow of your will into the hands of your servants.’
The reply returned by Lysaer through the link resounded with pleased satisfaction. ‘My command calls for war. The minion of Shadow has dared to turn west through the Skyshiels.’
Dropped prostrate before his altar, Cerebeld savored the intimate surge of impressions, then responded. ‘Your priests stand ready at Etarra and Morvain. The one bound for Jaelot is stranded in Darkling. He is prepared to act for you there. Shine the Light of your presence through me as your conduit.’
From the distant, closed privacy of the guest suite at Narms, the Exalted Prince raised his hand. Cerebeld trembled. Expectancy exploded to peak exultation as Lysaer s’Ilessid called down power and engaged his divine gift of light.
Seared through the eye of his inner mind, Cerebeld rocked to the surge of blind bliss. Primal pleasure burst the fragile template of identity, until Lysaer’s voice rang through every chamber of his opened mind. ‘Let the forces allied against Shadow arise and muster to arms! The minion of Darkness has returned to Rathain. He travels over the Baiyen from Jaelot, no doubt to lair up where the sorcerous powers still bind the old keeps at Ithamon. For the weal of the land, our duty is clear. We must launch a forced march across Daon Ramon and close ranks in strength to stop him.’
At Avenor, the High Priest let the message channel through him with all of its deluging glory. Unmoored by the blasting passage of pure Light, he was the nexus point, fulfilled by the dictates of Lysaer’s urgent purpose. The current coursed through him, aligned to arouse three other human vessels also pledged to eradicate Darkness…
In Morvain and Darkling, amid shadowed bedchambers, two priests of the Alliance snapped out of sleep, touched by the dazzling burst of divine vision. The summons resounded with Lysaer’s command to rise to arms and converge upon Daon Ramon Barrens. Wakeful, in Etarra, the third priest fell into a spiraling seer’s dream, spun on the airy crochet of the smoke that curled off a lit stick of incense. Swept head to foot with delirious joy, he embraced the clarion call of the Light. Through his office, the Exalted Prince’s will would be done. Etarra’s garrison would march south with all speed to pursue the minion of Darkness…
The Light ebbed, then dwindled, then died. Sprawled prone on the pillow before his altar at Avenor, Cerebeld shuddered in release. As always, the limp aftermath caught him defenseless.
He bit back a cry, ripped to desolation as his mind was cast into separation.
By now, he knew there existed no remedy for the dimmed prison of mortal limitation. He could only endure, drawn onward by the obdurate steel of his faith. One ritual to the next, he breathed for the moments when the exalted presence entered and claimed him as instrument.
At length, he gathered himself and arose. He felt hollow, diminished, a lackluster shell that stepped through the motions of living. Dry duty sustained him. The needs of the faithful required teaching and guidance. Their prayers must be led by rote. Amid the drab, puppet players he ministered, Cerebeld moved like the addict, perpetually craving the next golden dawn, when his being could rise and rejoice once again in communion with divine rapture.
Winter 5670
Solstice Moon Fortnight
In the Kingdom of Rathain, the trade cities of Etarra, Darkling, and Morvain hear Cerebeld’s chosen priests speak the word of the Light calling for the Alliance’s faithful to muster; while on the westshore, mounted couriers leave Narms bearing news of Lysaer’s arrival, and exhorting the surrounding town garrisons to join the campaign to run down the Shadow Master in Daon Ramon Barrens…
In Baiyen Gap, caught critically short of supplies since the demise of his supply train, Jaelot’s bespelled captain berates his sergeants rather than bow to the quandary of defeat, ‘Every man present will fare on half rations! A third of the company must continue