to lend grand display to his beneficence.
Yet this time, the flaring, fired brilliance which answered was not completely his own.
The two officers nearest sensed something amiss: as if the light were too fine, too potent, charged through by an effervescence of force outside the range of mortal senses. They called in consternation, saw their prince jerk up short. His calm shattered before irritation and astonishment as his frosty, white finery spun awry in a flux of uncanny, cold air.
Unseen, unheard, the Sorcerer Kharadmon linked his subversive conjury to the tide of the solstice noon. An actinic blast of heatless illumination exploded over the dais. The ranking royal bodyguards were rocked back and dazzled. They strove to reorient, unsure if they should draw weapons, or what form of enemy might manifest. Through an inrush of winds like a rip in clear air, they heard the crash of the coin chest, fallen from the prince’s grasp. Then the cascading treble as the shadow-banes burst free, clanging and scattering across the dais. Plucked off the boards like a captured chess piece, Lysaer s’Ilessid no longer stood among them. The circle of light just made manifest shimmered empty, while his chancellor and bodyguard gaped in terrified astonishment.
For Lysaer, seized fast by a presence that disallowed protest, the upset plucked him bodily and hurled him through the howling eye of chaos. He felt torn in half, upended, spun. Nausea threatened to rip up his guts. He battled to cope in riled anger. Led once before through a spell transfer across longitude, he recognized the forces of outside conjury just before the disembodied voice of Kharadmon informed him, “You are bound at this moment for Althain Tower in answer to summons by the Fellowship.”
Then transition ended. The wheeling cascade of disorientation snapped away. Lysaer felt his person restored to firm stone, but not in the plaza at Avenor. The smells in this place were ozone and dust, coiled through an elusive, dark tang of oiled metal. He shielded his eyes, made out a black onyx floor underfoot. The fierce play of light streamed from inlaid strings of ciphers, arrayed in disquieting patterns, concentric circles and interlocked rune lines yet limned silver-white in the fast-fading shimmer of spent energies. He recognized he stood at the apex of the power focus laid out in the keep’s lower dungeon. Its seamless walls were pale marble. Gargoyle sconces crouched leering at the major points of the compass. Lysaer’s flesh crawled with chills, gift of Luhaine’s nearby presence; then that cold intensified as Kharadmon flanked him as invisible escort to prod his stiff step toward the stairwell.
“You won’t get away with abducting me,” Lysaer ground out in low fury. “Nor can raw power absolve Arithon’s bloody crimes, nor the secret of your dirty liaison.”
“You’re no one’s prisoner,” Luhaine said, unperturbed. “As for keeping propriety, this meeting you attend shall be bent outside time. Your absence at Avenor will last no more than the wings of an instant.” He led up the stair shaft, his spirit reclothed as a courtesy in the image of a corpulent bald man from whose dimpled chin hung a cataract of silver beard. His stooped shoulders were robed in the dusty slate cloth favored by scholars and clerics, and his sandals fussed to a waxed shine.
Behind, manifest as a slim, dapper form cloaked in extravagant green velvet with slashed sleeves and linings of flame orange, Kharadmon showed his foxy smile. “Nor need you waste effort maligning your half brother.” He wore a black mustache twisted to raised tips like crossed scimitars. His beard was a spade-point goatee. The rest of his hair fell loose and long to his collarbones, argent combed through jet at the temples. He surveyed Lysaer’s pique with eyes a sardonic, pale green. “The only man’s fate held at issue today will be yours, scion of s’Ilessid.”
Every inch the born prince, Lysaer stayed unruffled by the Sorcerers’ cavalier handling. His tread on the worn, concave stair was assured, his bearing never less than a masterpiece of cool statecraft. He filed after Luhaine through the trapdoor to ground level, into the fragrant tang of cedar and the polished, frozen ranks of Paravian statuary. Though past high kings before him had cried aloud for sheer wonder at the antlered, stone majesty of the centaurs that raised hooves and towered above human height, Lysaer would not turn his head. Royally assured, he displayed no catch of breath. Nor did he marvel at the unearthly, stopped splendor of the unicorns, posed in dancing steps, with their spiraled horns struck soft pearl in the muted gleam through the arrow slits.
That veneer of indifference soon became forced. The willful, steel nerve he sustained throughout taxing state councils in this place chafed thin, made brittle as a mask of varnished paper. Lysaer fought the poignant, swift tug at the mind that moved prior visitors to weep. He refused for staunch pride to unbend. The Spinner of Darkness was the Fellowship’s minion; moral duty compelled him to stand strong. No matter the price, he dared not let the unworldly grace of a dead past beguile him into weakness. He walked as a man sealed deaf to temptation, while to the right and the left, the joyful, inspired artistry of the smallest ones, the sunchildren, ripped his heartstrings and begged him for laughter.
Ahead rose a staircase of stark, chiseled granite, blackened with centuries of torch soot. Althain Tower had been raised in beleaguered haste to safeguard the records of the Paravian culture. Its library held the chronicles of the First Age, when the ravaging hordes of creatures raised to life by the drakes’ dreams had led the world to near ruin. Sealed vaults and storerooms contained old weapons from those times, rare artifacts of Paravian craftwork. Young by comparison, the heirlooms recovered from the plunder of the high king’s halls shared shelf space.
The grim stairwell between levels still reflected the primary function as a fortress. Stark, unfinished stone made a wrenching, grim contrast to the grandeur of the commemorative statues. Here, even the most unflinching pride could not evade the imprint of despair. The moan of the drafts and the squeal of a loose shutter bespoke desolation, undying reminder of tragedy and losses endured since the departure of the old races. Lysaer set his chin. He refused to give way to emotion or embarrassment, and that hardened determination to stand down Athera’s past was not missed by the Sorcerers who escorted him.
They ushered him across the first landing, past the chamber where the Koriani Waystone had been held secure since the first chaotic hour of the rebellion; they ascended to the next, where Althain’s Warden kept his living quarters. On the third level, Sethvir himself awaited, the dusty, threadbare garments he preferred put aside for state formality: a robe of maroon velvet interlaced at sleeves and collar in black cord, and belted with a girdle stitched with river pearls. His beard had been tidied. Silk cord looped his hair at his nape, and his glance of greeting came sharp as a catchlight on fired enamel. “Welcome to Althain Tower, Lysaer s’Ilessid.”
The prince’s crisp nod offered civilized replacement for the bald-faced accusation, that in his hall at Avenor, hospitality did not include being snatched off by force.
Sethvir met that unspoken fuming with a note of disquieting, pure pity. “Beware how you think in this place.”
“I fear no one’s censure,” Lysaer said, and despite his best care, the pique showed.
“Perhaps not today, but the future’s not written.” Sethvir unfolded hands like gnarled twine and flung wide a door of iron-strapped oak.
Inside, the tower’s rough stone had been paneled over in linen fold patterns of golden maple. A carpet of Cildorn weave graced the floor of a comfortable, warm chamber. The furnishings included a table of waxed ebony, standing lions back-to-back as its pedestal, and chairs upholstered in dark leather with exquisite, chased ivory finials. Beeswax candles burned, both in tall stands and sconces. Rowed beneath the paned, lancet windows, and lent the rich depth of choice dyes, the banners of Athera’s five kingdoms hung from bronze tapestry rods. The ambiance held a grandiloquent, trapped weight of history before which Lysaer paused, amazed.
“Behold, the chamber of the high kings. Here, your ancestor, Halduin s’Ilessid, knelt and swore oath to the Fellowship. That blood vow he gave became binding on his progeny, for the length of his line, and all time. No light matter.” Sethvir’s gesture encompassed the cleared space before the table, no invitation, but strict command. “Through the duration of this audience, you will stand.”
Lysaer bridled, mocked at once by Kharadmon’s mercuric chuckle. “You