granted in accord with Tysan’s founding charter.”
An added voice gruff in the grain as old bedrock lent that statement full weight. “This is not the world of your birth, to acknowledge right of arms or direct ancestry.” Unnoticed until he straightened, another Sorcerer moved from his quiet, leaning stance against the ebon pilaster that flanked the fireplace. “You walk on Athera, in the hall at Althain Tower, where blood inheritance is fully revocable!”
Tall, worn to leathery leanness by centuries of life in harsh weather, Asandir was not clad for travel. The flames’ ruddy glow touched and drowned in the velvet of robes the deep indigo of midnight. Sleeves, hem, and collar were sewn in silver braid, matching the glint of his hair. Named Kingmaker in legend for the royalty he had crowned, he looked the part: clean-shaven, with sable brows angled in lines like slashed pen strokes, his cheekbones and nose as rugged as if notched by an axe out of hardwood.
“What brings your complaint?” Lysaer assumed his place in prideful, combative challenge. “I refused Tysan’s crown. The sovereignty I shoulder is none of your making, but springs from city law and a writ drawn by Karfael’s mayor.”
“Is that how you claim your right to set chains on free men, then subject them to branding and lifeterm of forced labor on the galleys?” From the doorway behind, Sethvir sighed. “I think not.” He added, “We’re all here.” Although he moved not a finger, the iron-strapped panel slammed closed.
Lysaer gave a start, but refused to acknowledge the arrivals who filed behind him. He took their measure instead as they assumed their seats at the table. The lead figure was hooded in a full-length white mantle. The face stayed shadowed and genderless despite the sharp brilliance of candles. Lysaer recognized the collar yoke and linked runes in silver and gold which denoted a life initiate of Ath’s Brotherhood. He sucked a grim breath. His prior suspicion stood confirmed: the adepts were in sympathy with Arithon s’Ffalenn, and this delegate’s presence, an unpleasant, sure proof that their kind had joined ranks with the Fellowship against him.
As dark followed day, a fifth Sorcerer limped after, his caped cloak, short tunic, and leggings woven of somber black wool. A raven rode his shoulder, wings spread over a steel gray thatch of hair. The bird surveyed the prince and the assemblage of Sorcerers, but its mind and its thoughts were not avian. All of its master’s shrewd intelligence lay reflected in eyes the hue of ripe chestnuts.
“Traithe,” Asandir greeted. A swordsman’s swift step carried him from the mantel to draw out a chair. His care for his colleague’s infirmity held deferent respect for good reason. Traithe of the Fellowship had been crippled since the terrible day he had raised the wild forces to seal the passage at South Gate against the Mistwraith’s incursion. His sacrifice then had cut off the invasion. Though fogbound, the world had survived. If his quizzical smile and listening ear had once eased Lysaer to amity, today, all the laugh lines were stilled. Traithe’s visage looked tired, his mouth a taut fold, grim with years and old pain.
Sethvir chose the seat beneath the banner of Tysan, flanked right and left by the mismatched shades of Kharadmon and Luhaine. Between the one, rapacious as a gambler in a card parlor, and the other, staid and somber as a judge, Althain’s Warden might seem like a maundering old man, prone to openmouthed dozing. Except the eyes he raised to the prince were no dreamer’s, but a surgeon’s kept steel, to flay skin from bone on a glance.
Lysaer resisted the coward’s urge to plead. Fellowship Sorcerers were not subject to persuasion. Unlike his packs of recalcitrant mayors, they could not be swayed by sincerity. Trappings of ornament or clothing would not impress them. At will, they could strip him down to his naked spirit. To face down all five without trembling in dread required an act of main strength. Lit by the merciless flood of the candles, Lysaer felt sealed outside of time. The tower’s very presence distilled his perception into shapes too precise for forgetfulness. Grand causes and ideals were excised and diminished. The strivings of honor and the layered masks of selfhood became turned about, reduced to flat copies in reflection, a purposeless circling like movements of fish behind glass.
Lysaer clasped his hands, steeped to acid resolve. He was the hawk in the falconer’s net, and the Fellowship, deadly and powerful conspirators acting in concert with a criminal. The right was not theirs to decry his moral destiny, or to accost him with binding judgment. They could hurl their dire threats, and he could refuse. He had no stake to bargain beyond dignity and life; his sole weapon became his own staunch fiber of principle. Let the Sorcerers break him with brute force and conjury if they could. For the sake of all threatened and innocent people, he would do no less than extend his best effort to stand strong.
Traithe opened in shaded, soft sorrow. “You are aware, our Fellowship acts in accord with the Law of the Major Balance. We bring harm to none, nor does our practice force any man against his given will. The talk in the cities of coercive spells and rituals raised out of bloodshed is no more and no less than the ignorant bluster of fear.”
“If choice is still mine, then send me back, now.” Lysaer inclined his head, every inch the magnanimous prince. “Or prove yourselves hypocrites, since the conjury which plucked me up out of Tysan was an act done without my consent.”
“You will listen.” Asandir sat forward, his eyes the washed, pale opal of the tiercel’s, and his expression forbidding as granite. “Games of rhetoric will not serve, nor will we bandy obstructive, petty argument. Do you realize, in truth, the place mankind holds in the order of this world? Or do you even care, in your self-righteous cry of public sacrifice?”
Kharadmon flicked one finger. Like the barbed parody of a stage magician’s trick, a shadow-bane flashed and arced airborne. Asandir fielded the spinning coin in one fearfully capable hand. At first touch, as if the gold scalded, his mouth flinched into a line.
“Abomination,” murmured the adept of Ath’s Brotherhood. The soft, fluting voice was female, and young, and the shadowy hood turned a fraction. Unseen eyes bored into the prince and measured his regal stillness. “Ah, no,” she said. “A mere hedge witch’s sigil to ward against darkness could not turn the might of the Fellowship. But stronger powers lie dormant behind symbols. Beliefs cling to metals. For those reasons, the cumulative resonance of your gold rings unclean.”
Asandir held the coin cupped between his palms. Through a span of stilled silence, its cast glow of reflection seemed to light his seamed face from within. He spoke a liquid, clear word. The language he chose was the ancient Paravian, and the inflection shaped sound like struck crystal. Time stopped, suspended. The mystery in that moment held the potential to snap thought, or the latent might to rend mountains. But Asandir’s summoning framed only kindness. Lysaer knew an instant of scouring, sore grief, that he was but fashioned of mortal clay. He felt as a child shut in the cold dark, and the wrench all but felled him, that the Name gently spoken was not his.
The shadow-bane melted to that power of compassion. Both sigil and sunwheel flowed molten and smoothed. Asandir was not burned. The disk he laid down and slid back across the table was transformed to a pristine blank. The Sorcerer spread his hands flat and looked up while the prince was still nakedly shaken.
“Tricks and spells,” Lysaer gasped. “Would any man argue? At your bidding a stone might be made to wail and weep.”
“Even so, the stone weeps for choice, by our code.” Asandir’s speech stayed dispassionate, uncolored by the fabric of sheer caring he had just summoned to redeem the shadow-bane. “What code shapes your life? The deceptive diffraction of Ath’s order you encourage shall afflict miseries to span generations. You style us criminals who break lives and spill blood. Do you not do the same for a feud?”
Lysaer snatched at argument to collect himself. “Why not tell me? Did Arithon s’Ffalenn weigh the full measure of consequence when he tore buildings in Jaelot stone from stone, or placed arms in the hands of Vastmark shepherds?” Flagged confidence returned, became ringing conviction. “What of the five hundred he murdered at the Havens? Or the mountains torn down upon Dier Kenton Vale to crush tens of thousands more beneath the Wheel?”
“Those spirits lived and died in free choice within Ath Creator’s ordained order,” the adept said in metallic