from her corner, moved, an animate bundle of shawls, to present her appeal last to the midwife. “Tempt no ill luck. There’s a sacrifice owed by this babe. He would have gained no firm foothold in this world at all, if not for the hand of the fferedon’li.”
The husband swore with expressive, fresh venom, his glare still locked on the enchantress.
Comprehension dawned late, like a douse of chill water, or a sudden fall through thin ice. Elaira understood where the brittle, steel tension had sprung from. Her heart leaped at once to deny her own part. “I wish nothing, no tie for my service!” Through the longer, louder wails of the newborn, her voice clashed in rising dissent. “Let the boy’s life hold to its own course, with no interference from me.”
“Ye know better, gifted lady!” the seeress said, tart. “The debt against this young spirit is a fair one, and to refuse his given charge, a sign of ill favor and disrespect.”
The father spun about, his bellow of rebuttal cut short by more withering reprimand. “Foolish man! Were ye raised by a nanny goat? Here’s a strong son ye’ll have, perhaps to beget other living children of your line! Now let the augury say what he’s to grow and become. He may bear your blood. Yet the fate he’ll be asked in payment for his birth is nothing else but his own!”
Silent, even mollified, for it had been her summons which had brought Elaira to the steading, the midwife lifted the naked, newborn babe, wiped clean of the fluids of birthing. A rutched comb of dark hair arched in a cowlick over the vulnerable crown of his skull. His face was rosy, suffused with crying, and his miniature feet lashed the air in what seemed an impotent echo of the father’s outrage.
At the dry, cool touch of the seeress’s hands his wails missed their rhythm and silenced. The crone raised the boy’s small body. Her eyes were dark brown, clear-sighted and deep, schooled to reflect the infinite whole, from which grand source came the spark to animate all that held shape in creation. Watching the finespun aura of spirit light flare up as the woman tapped into her prescience, Elaira experienced both relief and sharp dread. The old woman’s Sight was no sham, but an untrammeled channel attuned to the resonance of true mystery.
Then the words came, sonorous and full, to augur the coil of the future; they were directed, not to the babe’s kin, but to Elaira.
“One child, four possible fates, looped through the thread of his life span. He will grow to reach manhood. Should he die in fire, none suffers but he. Yours to choose when that time comes, Fferedon’li. Should he die on salt water, the one ye love most falls beside him. Should he die landbound, in crossed steel and smoke, the same one ye cherish survives, but betrayed. Yet should this child’s days extend to old age, first the five kingdoms, then the whole world will plunge into darkness, never to see sunlight or redemption. Your burden to choose in the hour of trial, Fferedon’li, and this child’s to give, the natural death or the sacrifice. Let him be called Fionn Areth Caid-an.” The ancient seeress lowered the babe, the hard spark fading from her eyes as she closed her final line. “Let his training be for the sword, for his path takes him far from Araethura.”
Elaira stared transfixed at the child just born and Named. She wished, beyond recourse, that her hand had slipped in its office, or that the dull-witted roan had mired in some drifted-over streamlet and fallen. Better, surely, if she had arrived too late, and this herder’s son had gained no saving help to survive his transition into life. As her wits shuddered free of paralysis, the enchantress could not shake off a terrible, pending burden of remorse. The feeling which harrowed her lay far removed from the soft, stifled sobs of the mother. Elaira could not react to the rattling slam of the door, as the father stormed out in mute rage, nor to the midwife, murmuring phrases of helpless consolation for the destiny forewarned by the seeress.
The enchantress felt the trained powers of her focus drawn and strained in a web of disbelief. The babe had such tiny, unformed fingers, to have tangled the destiny of the Shadow Master between them, and all he entailed, the misled fears which had raised marching war hosts; the bloodshed and sorrows of an age.
Winter 5647-5648
Far distant from Araethura’s wind-raked downs, in a wainscoted anteroom trimmed in gilt and agleam with pristine wax candles, an immaculate steward in blue-and-gold livery bowed to King Eldir’s ambassador. “His Grace, the Prince of the Light, will see you now.”
The visiting dignitary on the cushioned bench arose at the royal summons. A middle-aged man of spare bones and blunt demeanor, he seemed unremarkable for his post. Nor did he display the stylish, warm manner which trademarked the gifted statesman. Clad still in the travel-splashed broadcloth he had worn from the mired winter harborside, he followed the servant through the massive, carved doors, then down the echoing corridor which led to Avenor’s hall of state. Cold light, reflected off a late snowfall, streamed through the lancet windows. Here, no stray sound intruded beyond the measured tap of footsteps upon satin-polished marble.
The palace sanctum where Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid plied the reins of his government lay far removed from the chopped mud of the practice yard, where the handful of veterans returned from campaign drilled their surviving field troops.
No secretaries murmured behind closed doors. A lone drudge polished rows of brass latches, her labors methodically silent. The hush felt inert as the vault of a tomb. Three weeks was too soon for the city to assimilate the impact of a fresh and unalloyed tragedy. The burgeoning industry of Avenor, so magnificently restored, seemed stalled; as if even the very resonance of power stood mute, stricken numb by the news that even now rocked the five kingdoms.
Of the forty thousand dedicated men sent to war in the rocky scarps of Vastmark, all but ten thousand had died of the strategy unleashed by the Master of Shadow.
The declared neutrality of King Eldir’s realm made those casualties no easier to grapple. The ambassador sent by his liege to shoulder today’s dicey audience was a man appointed for patience, and valued for his skeptical outlook. The outraged grief and shocked nerves he encountered made even simple needs difficult. Since the hour of his arrival, he had weathered a brangle with the seneschal’s undersecretary, and before that, a harbormaster’s flash-point temper, to secure his state galley a close anchorage. He chafed at the pressure. To miscall any small point of diplomacy could spark an unforgiving train of consequence.
For the stakes ran beyond mere potential for bloodshed. The dead-locked struggle between the Prince of the Light and his enigmatic, sworn enemy had widened. Arithon’s works now polarized loyalties, and compromised trade in four kingdoms. Folk named him Spinner of Darkness since Vastmark. Fear of his shadows and rumors of fell sorcery attached to his secretive nature.
Sensitive to the pitfalls in the tidings he carried, the High King’s ambassador reviewed his firm orders. Then his sovereign lord’s entreaty, unequivocal and clear, given upon his departure: “Your loyalty may come to be tested, and sorely. Lysaer s’Ilessid can be disarmingly persuasive in pursuit of his hatred of Arithon. But the Fellowship Sorcerers grant no credence to his war to destroy the Crown Prince of Rathain. Your errand may well be received in disfavor. Should you find yourself compromised, even imprisoned under wrongful charges, you must keep my realm of Havish uninvolved.”
If the ambassador regretted the burden of his mission, the moment was lost to back down. The steward escorted him through the arched portals which led to Avenor’s state chambers. Masking unease behind a lift of dark eyebrows, for the credentials from his king had been public and formal, the dignitary found himself admitted through a less imposing side door.
In the smaller room used for closed hearings, Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid awaited. He was alone. A less imposing man, unattended, might have been overlooked on the dais, with its massive oak table, hedged by tall chairs with their carved and gilded finials, then these dwarfed in turn by the star and crown tapestry, device of Tysan’s past high kings. The woven device masked the east wall, gold on blue beneath the spooled rail of the second-floor gallery.
Limned