way for the passage of mysteries that were Ath’s gift to this world, their presence too bright for mortal endurance, outside of those families born into the time-tested strength of clan lineage.
Now, no burning torches etched the wavecrests like copper engraving. Nor did the memory of vanished powers linger, except in the unquiet peace of broken stones, and in the leashed sorrow of the Sorcerer who addressed them to settle the trace resonance of his urgent passage. He paid the abandoned fortress his respect. Despite the precision of Sethvir’s kept records, and the writings of the Paravian loremasters, Mainmere wore legends whose truths were no man’s to unlock.
The centaur mason Imaury Riddler was said to have placed a wisdom in each of the megaliths set into the primary foundation. At need, stone would answer, latent power unchained in whispered response to the step of the one who faced the hour of Athera’s most deadly peril.
Tonight, for Asandir, the dark rocks stayed silent. Only the storm-tattered crowns of the beech trees spoke on the stiff inland breeze, the first warning of winter borne on the dying taint of turned leaves.
Nor was the Sorcerer alone in that place.
As he strode from the quiescent white runes of the focus pattern, three forest-bred clan scouts stepped from the brush in cool, unafraid expectation.
‘Kingmaker,’ greeted the erect elder in the lead. ‘My Lady Kellis, Duchess of old Mainmere, bids you welcome. In her name, how may we serve the land?’
Asandir’s arched eyebrows showed surprise for the pleasure of the company. ‘She knew I was coming?’
‘She believed someone must.’ The lead scout reached the Sorcerer, arm extended for the customary wrist clasp. In clipped speech, he explained, ‘The grandmother seer who made simples at the Valenford crossroad was burned last month by the Alliance of Light’s Crown Examiner. She screamed as she died that her vision showed burning trees, and sunwheel soldiers wielding torches that opened the sky to a rain of scorched blood. The duchess was worried Caithwood might be threatened. She set us to watch in case help came.’
‘Daelion have mercy for the wrongful death sentence given that misfortunate seer! I’m here,’ Asandir affirmed, taller by a head, his blanket roll rammed under one elbow. Shock lent a quickened spring to his step as he let the scouts lead him onward.
‘So is Caithwood endangered?’ asked the woman among them, bitter with worry as her lanky, cat’s stride carried her through the maze of razed battlements.
Asandir followed through tufted bull grass toward the steep, crumbled stair to the sea gate. ‘Yes. Though the sealed orders from s’Ilessid were sent from Avenor only this morning. You have horses?’
‘Even better.’ The woman pointed toward the broken-down archway that funneled the hail of another voice, cautious above the muted splash of water off a bulwark of tide-washed stone. ‘We’ve got a smuggler’s boat from the river delta waiting. Her master’s a canny old fisherman who’s moved raided goods out of every deep cove in the forest. Where do you wish to make landfall?’
His descent economical on the mossy, cracked slabs of the stair, Asandir gave his answer. ‘The haven you have nearest a camp with fast horses, if I’m to spare more than green trees. How many refugee families are hiding south of the trade road?’
Just as sober, the scout captain replied, ‘All of them.’
Asandir’s response held barely leashed rage as the small party arrived on the landing. ‘Then thank that seeress’s unquiet shade for our chance of keeping them alive.’ He stepped from the crumbled breastwork into the battered fishing sloop held in waiting by a boy draped with cod-fragrant oilskins.
‘Grace, for your presence,’ he murmured in blessing, then assumed the dew-damp seat by the thwart. The bilge swirling under the boards at his feet stank of fish, and the prow held a heaped mound of trawl nets. To the balding, barrel-round man who surged to loose jib and mainsails, Asandir made direct inquiry. ‘Would you mind being loaned an unfair advantage?’
The fisherman’s teak face split with laughter. ‘Ye’d call down a gale? Toss up yer dinner, don’t come crying to me.’
‘How much can your craft handle?’ Asandir wedged his blanket roll out of reach of chance spray, while the boy and two of the duchess’s older scouts clambered in at his side. The woman stayed behind, her farewell brief as she shoved off the battered craft into the rip of the tide.
The dour helmsman grunted. ‘I’ll warrant my dearie’s canvas and sticks’ll take more abuse than your belly. We’ll do ten knots, if the old besom’s pushed.’
‘So, we’ll see.’ Grim since the news of the witch’s burning, Asandir touched the scout silent. He chose the heading for the helmsman himself, west-northwest, for the cove that lay nearest the trade road, which carved a diagonal scar through Caithwood and the low dales of Taerlin.
The fisherman stared at him, his meaty hands guided by instinct as he hauled in the mainsheet. Still regarding the Sorcerer, he called to his crew, a grandson or nephew by the look-alike stamp of young features. ‘Lad, clew in the foresail.’
His corded shoulders bunched as he made his line fast and hauled the boat’s tiller to port. The bow swung, sheered up a dousing sheet of spray while the headsail and main clamored taut. The hull rolled, settled into a steep heel, bashed and thrummed by the sucking drag of ebb tide. One squinted eye on the set of his canvas, the fisherman spoke at last in mild censure, ‘Can’t keep yon heading until the slack water at midnight. Current’s too stiff, no matter the lay of the wind.’
‘So we’ll see,’ Asandir repeated, his lean mouth pared thin with irony. He tucked his blanket roll under his shoulders, then reclined against the shining, wet wood and shut his eyes.
The older of the two clan scouts huddled into his fringed jacket and repressed the urgency to speak out of turn and disturb him.
Asandir sensed the man’s fretting. His speech came mild against the hammering tumult of wave and wind as the sloop fought the rip for her heading. ‘If your people have no horses tucked away near that landing, rest assured that I can make other arrangements.’
‘That’s well.’ Relieved to the point of embarrassment, the scout shifted aside for the boy, who moved forward, dripping, to find a cranny amid the wadded netting. The scout’s fox-thin features stayed trained toward the Sorcerer, pinched with frowning concern as he strove for politeness and subtlety. ‘In case you don’t know, there’s an Alliance war camp billeted next to the trade road.’
‘No setback at all.’ Asandir seemed removed, even distant, the seamed map of his features written in calm that verged on the borders of sleep.
That appearance deceived. Behind closed eyelids, the Sorcerer extended his awareness. He cast his trained consciousness outward in a web that missed nothing, from the skeined lines of force that guided the winds, to the deeper tie strung between moon and water, which commanded the pull of the tide. His mind tracked each wavecrest. He knew the purl of scrolled sound as salt water splashed into foam, each single event one word in a language his ear understood. He sensed the invisible, lightning tracks of magnetic current where the earth’s lane forces coiled through Mainmere and trailed a cascading signature of charged energy through the deeps.
His listening encompassed the fish in the shoals, and the gulls that bobbed, wing-folded in sleep on the swells. The sands of the seabed were singly made known to him, each grain by Name, their collective chord of existence laced through by streamered beds of kelp and live coral. The breadth of his thought embraced the four elements, and all else that touched upon the path of the fishing sloop’s crossing. To each varied and interlocked facet of existence, he gave solemn greeting, his tacit recognition a gift that awakened acknowledgment in turn. Through the vast stillness his announcement of presence engendered, he made known his need, then asked leave for the sake of the green trees threatened in Caithwood.
His answer came back as a white flood of power that sang through flesh and bone in sweet