savage eddy set the candle-flames fluttering. ‘Davien? Are you daring to suggest the Betrayer’s involved? Did he flit in and make off with the contraband before Luhaine and I reached Etarra?’
Sethvir’s wide-lashed eyes stayed a vacant, pale turquoise. ‘For all your distrust, Davien’s never been secretive. He may not pause for leave, but the thrust of his works has always been in the open.’
‘My question’s not answered!’ Kharadmon cracked. ‘If not one of us, then who else is left?’
‘Not who, but where,’ Sethvir defined, too aware of the stick that prospect kicked into the wasp’s nest. ‘I think we want Luhaine’s persistence, if our search must be widened to include Avenor.’
‘Lysaer’s private treasury!’ Kharadmon’s vexed presence recoiled. The vault in question lay beneath the caved ruin of Avenor’s state hall. The keys never left the false regent’s sole possession, even after Lysaer’s explosion of light had blasted the keep’s lower dungeon to rubble.
‘Where else?’ Sethvir said in dismal conclusion. Flame or magma could never destroy the skulls of Athera’s great drakes. But the strapped wood and silk that wrapped the arcane instruments under a passive protection would have been torched. Fire also would damage the skulls’ jewelled settings, in which case the ghost remnant of four foetal hatchlings might be cut loose in a state of unrest.
‘I have not sensed them stirring!’ Sethvir added, fast. ‘Let Luhaine confirm this before you rant! There’s every chance we might not face the disaster of seeing the birth of a new grimward.’
‘We need Asandir’s hands freed!’ Kharadmon skirted the bedside, riffling the blankets. ‘I don’t trust the Betrayer. Not his wild-card, cavalier handling, nor the means by which he has made himself corporate!’
‘Davien hasn’t troubled to offer himself, yet,’ Sethvir reminded with level simplicity. Eyes like mirrored cloud, he fanned old dissent to further his bald-faced dissembling. Behind conversation, the strain bled him, relentless. While the room seemed to reel with unnatural shadows, Kharadmon rounded, suspicious.
‘Ath above, what’s gone wrong? What else are you hiding? What crock of ill news? Is your prodding meant to divert me?’
Sethvir snatched command of the blistering pause. ‘It’s the fool with the torch who picks fights with the wind.’ His dead-pan expression might have been chipped from chert. ‘I don’t have the strength to chase every black vision. The true voice of hope never fades, though without Ciladis, one tends to forget.’
‘We’re drowning in chaos, while you shoulder a load any three of us would beg to delegate!’ Frost on hot iron, Kharadmon added, ‘I would take your place.’ With no such grace possible, and no opening to challenge the Warden’s prostrate regard, he circled again. ‘What’s left, but Lysaer?’
Sethvir pounced. ‘That busy brash rogue is forcing his claim on new Tirans. A sly plan, in full swing.’ The Sorcerer stirred a tremulous hand, inviting the timely diversion. ‘You’re certain you wish to bear witness?’
‘Sight before ignorance,’ Kharadmon groused.
Eyes shut, his face touched by ineffable sorrow, Althain’s Warden engaged an active link through his earth-sense and traced a circle onto the coverlet. Inside, demarked by his measured intent, a sequence of images unveiled the thrust of the self-styled avatar’s strategy …
As dusk falls in the trade town of Tirans, a lamplighter strikes a spark to a wick that ignites. But the flame fails to steady. An unnatural darkness swallows the flare, to a gasp of bewildered confusion … while, down the street, the sconce by a tavern doorway goes out, its brilliance stolen away … the fires in the bake-shop, and the spit in an inn’s kitchen, and the candle on the desk of a scribe do the same … across town, as night falls, every burning light fails amid gathering gloom. Havoc ensues. People rush outside, crying. Terror drives them to huddle in knots, while atop the gate watchtower, the flood of purloined fire coalesces into a raging beacon that illumines the flagstaff still flying the mayor’s device.
No other light breaks summer’s night but stars. Wild rumours fly house to house. News of a Sunwheel banner in the hands of the gate watch drives the seethe of a gathering crowd. The mob storms the door to the garrison keep. Deafened by the shouts, under assault by desperate citizens wielding craft-shop tools and pried-up cobbles, the acting captain cannot make himself heard. Two men-at-arms fall to a stoning. The town mayor and council find themselves helpless as well, unable to quell pandemonium.
Torn by riot, driven by panic, Tirans’ populace batters the grilled door of the gate tower, howling for divine Light in relief …
‘I see where this is leading,’ Kharadmon broke in, while the disturbing flow of scried images on the blanket faded into release.
‘The watch captain will raise the Sunwheel banner,’ Sethvir murmured with sorrow. ‘The same instant, Lysaer will step forth, clad in white pearls and state panoply. He will seize command through raw fear of the dark. We’ve already seen the voice of the mayor drowned by the uprising clamour. His council can’t lead, though they’ll try to hold out. The probabilities converge. By dawn, Tirans will be as softened clay in the trumped-up avatar’s hands.’
‘Like sheep, we’ll have veterans and recruits alike flocking under the Alliance banner.’ Kharadmon reversed course. The tight wind of his passage scattered the white hair spread over the Warden’s pillow. ‘What’s to be done?’
‘Visit Alestron,’ Sethvir said, pale as bone. ‘Pray the s’Brydion duke will hear the voice of old law and take warning.’
‘Why in Sithaer do I wish that Luhaine were here?’ Now poised to depart by the cracked open casement, Kharadmon snarled of his longtime adversary, ‘He’s the one better suited as a harbinger of doom.’
Sethvir widened his eyes. ‘You’d rather dig for the lost hatchling skulls beneath the charred vaults, at Avenor?’
For answer, a white rose spiralled out of the air and dropped on the bed-clothes. ‘I’ll bear-bait the wolves,’ Kharadmon responded, ‘before I sift through the trash buried under that abhorrent site.’
The next instant, he was gone, leaving Althain’s protections still as a premature tomb. Left in vigilant solitude, savaged by dread, Sethvir savoured the rose, while outside, the daylight bled out of the sky, and stained the layered cloud-banks blood crimson.
Bransian s’Brydion always knew by the wintry nip of the draught when a discorporate Sorcerer breathed down his neck. Burnished with sweat in his rolled-up sleeves, he hunched his obstinate shoulders. ‘Take your blustering elsewhere! I don’t want advice.’
Frost became tempest that raised a blue rime over his gorget and chain-mail.
The duke swore, stripped the armour, and planted his feet. Choleric as a bear in the faded surcoat his wife had thrice tried to retire, he cupped massive hands to his bearded mouth and bellowed downhill to the crew at the trebuchet. ‘Another wedge! Crank up the elevation! Then reload and release her again!’
Sunburned industry swarmed on the field below. Bare-chested men laboured, shouting. Ropes creaked and timbers counterweighted with a stone basket groaned and moved. By arduous effort, the massive throwing arm was levered erect, then cocked back.
‘Fire, you slugs!’ Duke Bransian howled. ‘No pissing off, and no slacking for beer bets! Who stalls to break wind will be grubbing with shovels to clear the latrines with the recruits!’
On the field marshal’s signal, the huge engine let fly. With a vast whoosh of air and a pendulous arc, the trebuchet lofted its missile. The launched boulder tumbled, reached height, then plunged, whistling earthward like vengeance unleashed. Outside the lower citadel walls,