of choked quiet. Avenor’s favored dignitaries turned heads and clasped hands, breasts locked in an epidemic seizure of stopped breath.
The messenger reached the dais stair, caught and braced by Sulfin Evend. Against the gold-trimmed tablecloth, he folded to his knees in a homage that verged upon total collapse. ‘Your Grace, Prince Exalted.’ Every mile he had ridden rasped through his spare words, a cry of appeal for his sovereign’s mercy against the ill news that he carried. He offered up the sealed roll of his dispatch with hands that shook beyond recourse.
‘Give the rider my chair,’ Prince Lysaer said, his shaft of exasperation for the lapse of humanity exhibited by his own stunned staff. ‘See him comfortable at once.’
Caught staring along with everyone else, Gace Steward started, then leaped to obey that ominous, struck tone of command. A brisk snap of fingers summoned a page to bring wine in a crystal goblet.
‘Sit,’ Lysaer said. ‘Since I see that the missive you carry is secure, you may count your mission as accomplished. Please accept your due honor and my praise for the hardships imposed on you by the season.’ Nor did he move to accept the dispatch until the man had been settled, and had drained the glass of Carithwyr red to the dregs. The creased parchment changed hands in resignation, not fear. The courier’s gratitude for small kindness served as fuel, cranking the onlookers to an unbearable, fever-pitched tension.
All eyes tracked the Prince Exalted, poised on the dais with the scroll case in hand but not yet opened. The seal was genuine, its imprint that of the Etarran commander who captained the campaign to rout the clan enclaves in Taerlin. Yet the superscription was not in Lord Harradene’s bold script; his cipher had been imprinted in haste by the secretary posted with the supply train at Watercross.
The glow on Lysaer’s pearls hazed to sudden motion as he ripped through the ribbons and wax. He read, while his courtiers hung, their anxiety unrequited by his majestic demeanor.
He reached the end and looked up, locked in private shock. Then, overcome, he closed his eyes, while the last bloom of color receded from his fair skin. ‘We are to mourn,’ he announced in a strangled, gruff utterance. Brute strength sustained him. He regained full voice. His announcement sang out with hammering force and rocked the far corners of the room. ‘Every brave man who stood ground for the Light in Caithwood has been struck senseless by conjury set loose by a Fellowship Sorcerer!’
An indrawn gasp swept the company.
‘Worse,’ Lysaer said, ‘there’s a haunting by trees that has closed the road to armed caravans.’
An explosion of fiends in Avenor’s main market would have created less havoc; this fresh disaster slammed home even as the first blizzards choked the high passes through Camris.
‘Grace save us, now even our land routes are strangled!’ pealed the distressed Minister of the Royal Treasury.
Before wailing pandemonium could upend the whole room, the Prince of the Light met injured rage with a cry of derisive astonishment. ‘Did you expect our triumph over tyranny could be simple? Or did you believe the Fellowship of Seven would abdicate its stranglehold of power for this, our first stir of opposition?’ Avid as white flame, Lysaer paused. His gaze raked the choleric tangle of courtiers, and his rebuke rolled on like a dousing of pure arctic ice. ‘You amaze me, afraid as you are for your gold, when four companies of dedicated Etarrans lie stricken. They have offered their lives on foreign soil for a cause far more grave and far-reaching than a short-term hoarding of wealth.’
‘Our coin paid for those troops,’ a man in claret velvet dared from the rearmost ranks.
‘Are you so faint of heart you can cry for results, but not weather even one setback?’ Lysaer’s tone shaded into ineffable sorrow. ‘I am shamed, then. Count endurance so lightly, then expect to fall short! The course we embark on will not ride on one effort, nor even flourish without a concerted, long-range vision of sacrifice. Upon petty greed and divisive hearts will the Sorcerers and the evil embodied by the Shadow Master achieve our sorry defeat. Men will weep then, and not just for one season’s lost profits in trade. No. The suffering price will be written and paid by our children’s descendants for all time!’
Tense stillness descended, stirred by the shifting of hats and corpulent weight, and the sweating of bodies discomfited by constraining state clothes and pressed velvets. Only Erdane’s man seemed unmoved, as a volatile defensiveness swept through the gathering, the smoldering spark of unease touched against their deep-seated fear of dispossession.
Prince Lysaer gave the guildsmen’s sullen quiet no quarter. ‘Very well. If the great citizens of Avenor lack the character and dedication to sustain the full course of endeavor, I shall expend every resource I have to remember humanity first of all.’
An eruption of protests rattled the salvers, with the shrill, angered cries of Avenor’s guild ministers ringing the loudest of all.
‘What’s to be done?’ snapped the Minister of the Royal Treasury. ‘You have no vast funds to wage a winter campaign, and your dowry’s been promised to the shipyard.’
A hard, weighty pause; then Prince Lysaer turned his back. His appeal was presented to no one else but his steadfast Lord Commander. ‘You have my direct order, and an open note on my possessions. Sell every furnishing, every tapestry, every chest of gold plate in my household and use the proceeds to succor those fallen. Give all in my power to provide for their care. You will make free of Tysan’s crown resources, and call the full garrison back into field service. Their immediate muster will lend you the muscle to move every man stricken down into dry quarters and comfort.’
Against the dismayed rustle arisen at his back, his words lashed with stinging reprimand. ‘Every captain or soldier who refuses my summons will be turned off without pay! More than that, any city too engrossed in self-interest to supply aid will be cast outside my protection.’
He exhorted no more, spoke of no retribution. In suspense, his courtiers craned forward. They expected the usual smooth flourish of statecraft that would frame the grand plan to build forces and see justice done.
Lysaer gave back the barest, leashed glance of exasperation. His carriage displayed his most acid contempt as he dismissed his Lord Commander to shoulder the duties set upon him.
The impact struck home: outside of all precedent, there would be no fiery speech of inspiration, no brilliant new strategy to banish the perils of high sorcery.
The Prince Exalted awarded the grave majesty of his regard to the mud-splashed courier, who sat dazed with exhaustion in his chair. As though that picked audience was intimately private, he bestowed the magnanimous accolade of his kindness. ‘For your care for your fellow Etarrans, please stay. Sit and sup in my place. Enjoy the best food and drink in good health, for in sad fact, my presence is wasted. The truth is a tragedy, as you see. Avenor begs for no guidance beyond the bare need to see its trade and its merchants feather their own nests, and I was not born, nor gifted with divine powers for the purpose of rich men’s protection.’
A muted flash of his pearls underscored his gesture to summon his page to his side. Then the Prince of the Light stepped down from the dais. Without further ceremony, he swept from the hall, leaving Erdane’s delegate struck thoughtful, and Avenor’s state ministers gawping like fishes tossed onto shores of dry sand.
Early Winter 5653
Prime Enchantress
At the private banquet in Avenor’s royal palace, two deferent servants sprang to open the doors for the Prince of the Light’s precipitous exit.
Stunned silence reigned through the first, dizzy breath of disbelief. Then tumult resurged with a bang of wild noise that rocked echoes off the groined ceiling. On the high dais, seated in the royal chair, the road-muddied messenger who dispatched the bad news blinked over the abandoned spread of fine food. He watched Avenor’s state officers and trade ministers recover shocked wits and argue