know.’ Mearn’s admission came without pride. ‘Prince Arithon spoke with a prophet’s conviction. I never was deaf to wisdom. Yet these are my brothers. I would run this dagger through my own heart before I desert my blood-kin.’
‘And Fianzia?’ Kharadmon ventured at last, the lady’s full name spoken with tenderness. ‘You’d risk her to the rampage of Lysaer’s crazed following?’
Mearn’s level stare never faltered. ‘She carries our child. Whatever she thinks now, that babe is our life, made in wedded union between us. Be sure I will sacrifice all that I have to ensure she survives to give birth.’
No more could be given; nothing more said. Kharadmon would have bowed, had he still possessed flesh. No such parting salute was left to a shade. Just regretful silence, followed by a retreat to visit the comfortless news on Dame Dawr.
Three days later, still held in close seclusion within the rock caves of Sanpashir, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn paused where he knelt. He remained oblivious to Lysaer’s bold claim at Tirans; was yet unaware of Jeynsa s’Valerient’s resolve to question his royal character. The hands that secured the hide covering over his heirloom lyranthe poised with the laces half-tightened when the soft, barefoot step he expected intruded upon his kept solitude.
He finished the last knot. Turned his raised head, aware who approached well before the arrival emerged from the underground corridor. He arose with respect. Flawless in courtesy, he offered a seat on the folded blanket that had lately served as his bed. No fool, he did not make the outsider’s mistake and try to lend an elder assistance.
The aged matriarch of the Biedar therefore took her imperious time to make herself comfortable. She circled the rock-chamber. Her fathomless interest peered into the dim corners; stared everywhere else but at the royal guest standing at her attendance.
Arithon waited. He might have been stone, so deep was his courteous stillness. The overhead crack that admitted the day’s failing light dropped a shaft of hazed gold through the gloom. The mote shifted slowly from citrine to rose, then faded into still twilight.
The crone settled at last. A young woman arrived with a fire-pot, then a man bearing strips of raw meat on peeled sticks.
Arithon stayed on his feet, while the revered one roasted her meal. She watched him with bright, bead-black eyes, and as thoroughly chewed each steaming bite.
‘You would not have answered my summons,’ she revealed at length, though not before the evening wind moaned its chill serenade through the gap.
Arithon suppressed his most combative smile. Empty hands remained clasped at his waist. ‘You would not take my gift for your tribe’s hospitality. Therefore, we both suffer hardship.’
The grandame’s cackling laughter bounced off the rough walls, waking a thrum of muffled resonance from his wrapped instrument. ‘One might knap a flint knife with your tongue. Dare you leave? I have not released you with the tribe’s blessing.’
The threatened curve turned Arithon’s lips. ‘And do you bless prisoners who should be set free?’ Regarding her, serious, he added, ‘The one who came armed was dispatched to his ship with no such presumptuous ceremony.’ He considered with care, then selected the term that meant ‘unwitting, ignorant stripling.’ ‘Do you halter the m’a’hia who comes to you naked?’
‘You are not healed!’ the grandame said, angered. ‘A warrior not in fit state does not travel.’
Arithon resisted the need to lash back. ‘Yet I bear no arms.’
Bone trinkets and fetishes clinked: one deft, ancient hand clapped the clay lid on the fire-pot, and night swallowed the blood glare of the coals. ‘M’a’hi! Grown but foolish! You should. Men are burning the standing crops in the fields. This I have seen, in East Halla.’
Cold despite his borrowed silk clothing, Arithon shivered. ‘But I am not bound for East Halla. My path leads to Atwood, by way of Alland, and my sword was left, safe, back in Halwythwood.’ Other messages lay rolled in the wood cylinder, bundled beside his lyranthe. The scroll-case bore letters for Fiark, at Innish, releasing the trade factor and other sworn allies from lists of detailed obligations. ‘Old mother, your care is a dangerous gift should it cost me the lives of my friends.’
The crone arose at his chiding plea. Glass and copper chimed gently as she raised her creased hands and cradled his face with a feather touch. In darkness cut by the pearl gleam of the starlight let in through the overhead crack, she stared into Arithon’s eyes. Her intensity raised the hair at his nape as she said, ‘Mother Dark’s mystery walks in your tracks, while we are the wind, chasing after the wisdom to read them. You will cross through the far side, and visit death twice again. When we meet, I will be with the ancestry.’
Cloth rustled within the deeps of the cavern. Already, a robed band of dartmen assembled to serve as his tireless escort. Arithon reached up and gently unclasped the aged woman’s confining embrace. ‘I do not leave your people, unblessed, after all?’ he challenged with tender humour.
‘You bless our tribe, not the other way round,’ the ancient woman corrected. Then she stepped back and released him, though clear mage-sight would show him the tears cascading down her weathered cheeks.
Late Summer 5671
Foray
A man’s heart could grow sick, watching the smoke-plume spread on the wind across the scorched fields of East Halla. Yet a veteran captain of Talvish’s stature knew better than to criticize Duke Bransian’s pre-emptive strike. Never mind the fact, that the order to raze the earth’s bounty was an ugly defiance of charter law.
Sited beyond the bounds of the free wilds, Alestron would not incur direct censure by any Fellowship Sorcerer. Melhalla’s caithdein held the steward’s right to cry debt in the name of crown justice. Her concern for clan survival in Atwood came first. This razing of crops could scarcely incite the town garrisons to invade her domain any faster.
Already, the Light’s call to arms swept the peninsula with a brush-fire’s kindling speed. Galleys raced Lysaer’s summons the length of the eastshore, while word winged its way inland to Shand by pigeon and post, through Six Towers, Ganish, and Atchaz. The onset of winter would bring no relief: fresh troops from the south would bolster the ranks as rough weather thrashed the northern harbours. Faced by an assault of unprecedented scope, the brothers s’Brydion ripped off the muzzle of peace and torched their last hope of diplomacy.
Today’s standing grain would never supply the war host inbound to besiege them.
Retainers since birth, Vhandon and Talvish had fought such brutal campaigns under Alestron’s banner before: the same reiver’s tactics would be launched at Kalesh or Adruin, or both towns at once, when hostilities caused by a bottle-necked shore-line progressed from hurled threats to bloodshed. Alestron’s harbour mouth was flanked by armed adversaries. No s’Brydion duke could ever afford to negotiate peace with complacency. When enemy galleys cut off the narrows, Bransian’s field-captains deployed their light horse like hawks and burned out the hayricks and crops. Ships’ crews could not hold a determined blockade without provender to sustain them.
Yet where Talvish once wielded the torch under orders, now his scouring silence reflected a new-found frustration. He and Vhandon had been stretched for too long to keep pace with Prince Arithon’s astute innovation. They had experienced the cross-currents of Alliance politics at first hand. This time, a pitched stand against Lysaer’s hot cause would not wane with the advent of snowfall.
Both men remained too determined for despondency, when Vhandon strode from the outer-gate ward-room at dusk, armed and dressed out in a new surcoat bearing Alestron’s bull blazon. His shout sent the officer’s equerry running to fetch him a saddled mount.
Talvish looked on with half-lidded, green eyes, fast to notice the crested officer’s badge stitched to