.

barbarians.

      “I won’t shoulder that risk!” Dakar ranted on. “Yes, I lack the main strength. No ranging ward I might weave can subdue an elemental mastery of light. Be patient for another few days. At least until I’ve ascertained we’re clear of Arithon’s fatal proximity.”

      Which callous mention of that accursed name triggered Desh-thiere’s geas. Whiplashed by the assault, Lysaer shuddered in agony. The vicious drive to embrace wholesale ruin set his wits under siege. He battled for reason, as always. Clung to the rags of free choice: not to blast everything within reach with a levin bolt charged to melt stone into magma. He suffered in recoil. While the primal torrent surged to consume him, the gall of repeated past failures made a mockery of his resistance.

      Torment wrung a gasp from him.

      The sound stopped the ongoing argument. Gravel grated. Someone’s scuffed tread approached.

      Lysaer twisted for confrontation. Any frail stay to distract him from the drive of the curse.

      Glare stabbed his eyes like needles to the brain. Squinting against the white dazzle of sky, he made out the loom of volcanic formations grotesquely weathered and eroded with crumbling arches. Then a shadow flicked over him. A clownish face eclipsed his view, raffishly bearded and wisped with grey hair, streaked by faded chestnut. Cheeks and snub nose wore a peeled scald of sunburn on a countenance stripped of forbearance.

      Dakar snapped, “Don’t think to put on your statesman’s mask, Lysaer! I’ll stand for no pretence. Are you able to govern your natural mind? Or speak with frank honesty? Then defend your case. Convince me that you didn’t kill her.”

      Which test of trustworthiness needed no name. Viciously personal, the accusation frayed the last thread of sane balance. Lysaer bridled. He sucked an offended breath through clenched teeth. Whether to plead or to scream became moot: as if human language existed to stem the cascade towards disaster.

      The idiot spellbinder lectured, oblivious. “This is not Sithaer, but a place in the Scarpdale Waste called the Stacks. Before you cry foul, accept your lot, held under my charge in good faith.”

      Lysaer’s temper ignited. His lethal retort in pure light tipped towards destructive release.

      Dakar yelped. Eyes widened, he scrambled too late for a stop-gap intervention. Yet what murderous damage might have ensued, his unseen companion’s blow, swung from behind, clipped Lysaer’s nape like Dharkaron’s vengeance.

      He dropped limp, hurled back into black-out unconsciousness.

      Saved, but not sanguine, Dakar rebounded from shock and glared at his slighter accomplice. “That’s thanks for the killing strike I didn’t field?” he shouted in caustic astonishment. “Best hope your crude remedy didn’t crack his Lordship’s thick skull.”

      Daliana hurled aside her makeshift bludgeon: a chunk of fire-wood, padded at need with a grimy Sunwheel surcoat. The billet thudded into the wagon-bed next to Lysaer’s slack form. “Necessity,” she stated, crisp. Stripped to a squire’s shirt and torn hose, she scrambled over the tail-board and knelt to examine her prostrate victim.

      Blond and royal-born, chiselled to a statuesque fitness made to bring sculptors to rapture, Lysaer looked, every inch, like the downfallen avatar worshipped by the Light’s faithful. Unwashed, dishevelled in his soiled white tunic, he sprawled with an unconscious majesty designed to wreak female havoc. A stone heart could but melt at the sight of such helplessness, trussed ankle and wrist in looted strap leather.

      Daliana’s features already softened as she explored Lysaer’s goose-egg bruise. “This wants ice.” Flushed by shameless regret, she leaned on Dakar’s scant sympathy. “Might you fashion a construct to freeze a piggin of water?”

      “My sleep spell wouldn’t have dunted his noggin,” Dakar grumbled with reproach.

      “No.” Daliana unfurled the surcoat from the billet and wadded a pillow for her liege’s bashed head. “But your callous comment left his Lordship no civilized course to salve his wounded pride. Someone had to do that for him.”

      When Dakar said nothing, she straightened, contrite, a tanned, slender minx with tawny eyes fierce enough to outface a tigress. She brushed back chocolate hair that a fortnight in barren country had tangled for want of a comb. “Your sack of wound remedies includes poppy? Then perhaps a tisane for headache could be added to his next dose of valerian.”

      But when her concession to further drugged sleep failed to lift the fat spellbinder’s frown, Daliana lost patience. “You claimed Asandir had swept Lanshire clear of The Hatchet’s war host under Fellowship mandate!”

      “He has.” Dakar’s pouched eyes blinked with injury. “My scrying shows the last companies of rear-guard have withdrawn past Havish’s northern border.”

      “Since when?” Her irritable gesture encompassed the spires of lava, pocked in between with ash pits and hot springs rimed with bilious mineral deposits, plumed geysers, and steaming mud pots. “Why are we still skulking like rats in a place fit only for scorpions and lizards?”

      Dakar deflated. Careless of splinters, he perched on the dray, which was flat, without shade for relief since an awning increased visibility. “The orderly troops have departed. But I cannot trace every straggler or the criminal bands of deserters.” He cut her off. “Oh, yes! There are rogues holed up in the Storlain foot-hills. They’ll be making their furtive way on the sly. Hungry enough to slaughter our draft team or kill for the theft of a horse.” He need not broach rape. Not after Daliana had braved the peril of the Light’s war camp. Alone, without a stitch of protection beyond several daggers and a lance squire’s dress, she must acknowledge her personal vulnerability.

      Since Arithon’s recent escape from Lithmarin ruled out travelling south, the inhospitable terrain to the east provided a brutal haven. The reduced chance that Lysaer might be seen forestalled the armed rescue that would come in force if word of his presence alerted the True Sect fanatics.

      Daliana tossed back the damp braid pasted against her neck. “Stop lying, then. You don’t need to buy time to perfect any ward ring. You haven’t the means to fashion a shield against elemental light in the first place!”

      Dakar side-stepped. “You can’t know that for certain.”

      Which evasion sparked Daliana’s mercurial laughter. “I wear Asandir’s mark, or did you forget? At Morvain, tossed into the holocaust of Lysaer’s curse-driven fire-storm, even your former master’s ward wasn’t infallible.”

      Trickling sweat, Dakar warned, “Be most careful. It’s a deadly folly to presume with regard to the actions of Fellowship Sorcerers. The power they wield was bestowed by the dragons. They can do the unimaginable, and without limit. Never ever forget the more dangerous list of what actions they might be withholding under some abstruse ethical preference.”

      But reckless as Dakar had been in the past, Daliana shrugged off the gravity of semantics. “Whether or not a sure safe-guard exists against Lysaer’s gift, why not admit the truth? You’re past your depth. We’re here because there’s minimal brush and nothing in range that’s combustible!”

      Dakar deflated, stung by the irony that had landed him on the flip side of his own argument: Lysaer could not be drugged unconscious, indefinitely. The palliative use of medicinal draughts tore away what remained of a spirit already shattered by a cursed compulsion.

      “Why not stand off and allow me to handle him?” Daliana pleaded. “Could I do any worse? Your blunders have done little else but inflame the wound in his self-respect.”

      Mightily worn by his shortfalls in the arena of subtle relationships, Dakar lashed back. “I should abet your impetuous ruin? What happens the next time your liege goes insane and fries the ground where you stand? Don’t tempt fate! You haven’t the strength to constrain him each time he loses his grip.”

      “Then think beyond the use of brute force!” Before