running dogs for the head-hunters’ league.
Elaira wrenched out of trance, shoved erect much too fast. Her staggered step encountered Sidir, his alert courtesy charged to alarm by the sight of her stricken face.
‘What’s wrong?’ Just as fast, his bracing grasp steadied her. ‘Has Jieret’s daughter been killed?’
‘No.’ The enchantress shivered. ‘Not yet. She’s endangered.’ Displaced senses still reeling, Elaira unburdened. ‘Jeynsa’s already crossed Daenfal Lake. She’s set on the run through the game trails of Silvermarsh, pressed by a bountymen’s ambush.’
‘Fatemaster’s mercy!’ Sidir pealed in anguish. His grey eyes held the urgency seen once before, that unthinkable night when he had forced the breach of his crown prince’s intimate privacy. ‘How can I tell her mother we’ve failed? Dharkaron avert the cold hand of necessity! That girl’s got a lead of sixty-five leagues, too far to hope we can help her.’
‘Not if we chase her,’ Elaira agreed. ‘She’s ahead of her enemies. She may outwit them. If not, the trackers will haze her into West Halla.’
‘Straight into the swords of the Alliance’s muster, by now choking the trade-routes through Pellain!’
As Sidir loosed his grasp, lashed frantic, Elaira captured his sleeve. ‘Wait. There’s more.’
Restrained at the edge of explosive impatience, the Companion still listened.
‘Jeynsa’s bearing a talisman,’ said Elaira, aggrieved.
His sharp wit took stock. ‘Then why didn’t Eriegal decide to tell us, since he saw her off back in Halwythwood?’
Elaira met that probing dissection with silence, reluctant to suggest a conspiracy. Since the man at her side would shatter himself in a doomed attempt to best fate, she strove to avert suicidal disaster.
‘I know you’re loath to rely on my trust. But, Sidir, if you ask, I can hasten our journey. Snag a ride on the deck of a trespassing barge, and my resource can buy a swift passage. From Daenfal, we could fare southward by river.’
‘You could disguise my origins?’ The clansman’s bleak glance mapped that prospect, displeased. ‘Perish the thought! Far more than my life will reside in your hands.’
‘I know.’ Elaira withstood the balked heat of his rage. ‘Dharkaron’s revenge strike me dead if I’m false, since I don’t see a more hopeful recourse.’
‘On your head, then,’ snapped Sidir, his staunch courage proof of his iron-heart character.
No use, to pretend that his stakes were not desperate. For every step taken to speed their pace to Melhalla, the Light’s call to war would raise obstacles. The inns and the roads would be seething with troops. Each officer bearing a stamped requisition would be clamouring for transport, alongside contingents of Sunwheel priests, with the eyes of their zealot examiners. Should her power of arcane concealment fall short, or should her Prime Matriarch’s fickle interests command Sidir’s betrayal, he would be condemned. Clansmen caught inside town precincts were granted no trial. She asked Rathain’s most loyal liegeman to run the risk of a death that began with public dismemberment.
Late Summer 5671
Three Riders
A fast galley from Jaelot docks at Varens, with the Light’s avatar rushed ahead down the trade town to Tirans bearing the shocking news: that the Spinner of Darkness has dared to strike at Etarra’s high council by sorcery, and that the s’Brydion duke at Alestron has betrayed the Alliance in liaison with Shadow; therefore, the citadel and its corrupt defenders must be destroyed for rightful cause and by force of arms …
Galled from exhaustive days in the saddle, the Mad Prophet spurs through the town gates of Darkling amid the Skyshiel pass, only to find the spectacular demise of the Light’s cult-tainted priest has ignited the troop muster ahead of him, with no horse, no cart, and no transport available to hasten his urgency to reach the Eltair Coast …
Beset while reforging Scarpdale’s torn grimward, Asandir kneels beside his dying stallion, torn for his dread choice: to consign the burden of his unfinished mission back into Sethvir’s taxed hands, and not leave the beloved horse’s left shade to be subsumed by ravaging chaos; in mourning, he voices the Name for Isfarenn, binding the freed spirit under secure ward for return to Athera’s continuum …
Late Summer 5671
On the day that event struck the anvil of fate, the ambassadorial courier from Varens rode into the trade town of Tirans. He came in the company of four mounted men and passed under the northern gate of the teeming, walled rise that guarded the industrious hub of East Halla’s peninsula. Amid summer haze, the carnelian brick watchtowers arose, sturdy and square, gold-rimmed against an egg-shell sky. Beneath, the dust stirred up by labouring caravans spread a choking, alkali cloud.
The lumbering farm wagons emptied since dawn crowded past eight-in-hand ox teams, hauling inbound drays from the coast. Wedged in the crush, the sweating courier glanced sidelong at the rider clad in sweat rag and hat and anonymous leathers beside him. ‘You were mad to come here without a state retinue.’
The shaded face turned. Fair-skinned, handsome features wore the same grime that coated all summer travellers. A haggard expression bespoke the rigors of three harried days in the saddle. Yet the glint in those wide-opened eyes stayed as steel, struck off azure ice. ‘So we’ll see.’
Turned forward again, Lysaer s’Ilessid never acknowledged the anxious men-at-arms paired at his back. His magisterial manner also refused to draw rein for the tender young talent who straggled behind: today’s royal page was the gawky get of a Korias crofter. He still showed his plough-boy’s fist on the reins, more at ease with a scythe than a weapon. If the Light’s Lord Commander might have bade to correct the appalling lapse in formal panoply, Sulfin Evend was at large to muster the southcoast. His absence left the daunted dismay of his overruled, second-string officers.
The Blessed Prince remained unfazed. He surveyed the jostling backs of the draught teams, then the craft quarter shop-fronts with their gaudy signs. Adroit, he avoided the flower seller’s child, darting to hawk posies to the silk-clad matrons in their parked carriages. Tirans’ three-storied mansions framed the scene with established elegance, from door-sills agleam with new paint, to the carvings on marble cornices. A balladeer’s notes braved the hubbub. The civilized populace adorned their dwellings with statuary, while the potted ivy and gardenia trailing from the upper galleries trumpeted nonchalant affluence.
Against the courier’s outspoken concern, Lysaer observed, ‘After all, we’re not visiting a den of barbarians.’
His informants’ reports had not been remiss: unlike the seaports, this town’s ruling council had yet to embrace the cause of Avenor’s Alliance. If the merchants and well-set craftsmen were aligned with the leanings of trade, Tirans supported no head-hunters’ league. Her standing garrison did not chafe to impinge on the designate bounds of the free wilds. The canny mayor reigned without jostling to upset traditional diplomacy. Here, at the core of East Halla’s prosperity, a frail-but-established truce had held sway since the downfall of Melhalla’s crown. Charter law still kept tenuous influence.
Atwood’s clans were too powerfully placed, allied as they were in tight interest with the warmongering s’Brydion dukes. Which stew of old order and defiant town enterprise primed the stage for an uncivil welcome.