by the Prime’s power, not since the Biedar crone’s secretive working at dawn smashed the crystal that constrained his consciousness.
By the earth-linked assurance, sped to Asandir on a thought from the Warden at Althain Tower, the man the Koriani Prime Matriarch would cry down for murder had just crawled, anonymous, under a tarp in a crofter’s rattletrap oxcart. Precariously hidden from hostile eyes, he lay curled in oblivious sleep. As yet, no one realized he was there.
Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn was safe, for this moment. Until greater peril should stalk his location and fashion the ambush to snare him, the refugee slipped from the Prime Matriarch’s clutches did not recall his own name. More, he had lost a daughter he had never known, or been told that his love had bequeathed to existence.
The Sorcerer bled with inward sorrow for that; and for the unparalleled courage that had sealed Teylia’s silence through two hundred and forty-nine years of agonized secrecy. Rivers of tears should have fallen to acknowledge her selfless memory. No consolation might salve such a loss. Grieving, and saved beyond recompense by her monumental achievement, the Sorcerer tendered his final word to Selidie Prime. ‘You will not threaten anyone further, today, madam! Above any faithless action of ours, your debt of constraint against Rathain’s crown for now has been summarily thwarted.’
Autumn 5922
Tidings
The enchantress already knew, aware even before the visitation sent by Althain’s Warden brought news. From extreme isolation, immersed in a healer’s work from an old ice-cutter’s hut shadowed under the aquamarine wall of the Storlain glaciers, she had sensed the profound change on the moment when shock stopped her breath in the pre-dawn chill. Her satchel of simples slipped out of her hand. All her rare herbals and specialized instruments tumbled down an alpine cliff, lost amid puffed explosions of powdery snow.
She had not paused to swear. Had scarcely cared, that her follow-up check on the trapper’s wife’s recent childbirth would be set back by the inconvenience.
Hours later, in daylight, after the long hike round the ridge to access the base of the vertical drop, she wept yet, whiplashed between unbridled release and bouts of joyous laughter. Gratitude overwhelmed her last grip on decorum. Never mind that her russet braid had torn loose. Or that her last pair of gloves became frayed to soaked holes at the finger-tips. She was heedlessly burrowing through rumpled drifts in search of her misplaced belongings when the shade of the Sorcerer tickled her presence.
A power to turn the world’s course in his own right, he slipped in softly, a breath of deeper cold against the sharp chill of high altitude.
‘He’s set free!’ the enchantress was first to declare, overcome once again. Arithon. She could not speak his name for the tears that spilled through another fierce smile of wonderment. The miracle rocked her, that she had endured: decades, then centuries, heart braced to withstand season upon season of unreconciled anguish. The onslaughts survived under crushing despair, when dreaming into the horrors he fought, she wakened each night bathed in terrified sweat, gasping for mercy from every bright power that she might live to see the impossible.
A Sorcerer come hard at the heels of reprieve triggered her most fearful question. ‘Whose help lent his Grace the chance to escape?’
A deep voice, wrought of wind, framed the Sorcerer’s reply. ‘The double-blind scheme was the careful work of the Biedar tribe of Sanpashir.’ Which was no lie, except by omission. If the enchantress sensed the gravity of the particulars that weighted the statement, she was wise enough not to broach the dangerous inquiry. ‘The tribe’s eldest wise woman and her male dreamers invoked the world’s greater mysteries,’ the Fellowship emissary to Elaira hastened to qualify. ‘Their reach extended across the veil and split time to achieve this triumph on Prince Arithon’s behalf.’
‘My Matriarch knows this,’ Elaira mused, quick to wield her trained intuition as circumspect caution required. She straightened up, turned, a slender woman with misted grey eyes, but courageous past measure to face the discorporate being sent as the Fellowship’s harbinger.
He stood, an illusion less solid than air, displayed before her as a dapper personage with tanned skin, and dark hair streaked white at his craggy temples. His extravagant dress was embroidered with lace, jaunty accents of emerald studs and silk ribbon agleam against elegant velvet. Orange satin cuffs set off his clever hands, expressive as his narrow, fox features and clipped spade-point beard: which aspects perfectly mirrored his rapacious preference for edged conversation.
‘Kharadmon,’ the enchantress greeted him, pleased. ‘Always, the suave touch. This isn’t an ambush?’
‘Since Sethvir doesn’t favour the vogue for snared hostages, no.’ The image of the Sorcerer bowed, ever delighted to flights of dry irony by her tart wit. Their last meeting, of course, had been brusquely uncivil, her reproach the piquant reminder that once he had broached her close-warded cottage and disturbed her sleep while in her bed.
Today’s underhand tactic of announcing himself from behind was also deliberate though not a discourtesy. His amused glance directed her attention downwards, where a zephyr winnowed the snow at his feet and exposed the strap of her buried satchel. His own flagrant flourish: a long-stemmed red rose, too fresh to seem real, pierced the pristine drift alongside. ‘I’m not always ungallant. Or demanding. Or rude.’
‘Intrusive,’ Elaira corrected, and laughed. Flushed, she bent and accepted the bloom, her uncovered remedies left until later. ‘Should I also thank your Fellowship for a scandalous hand in the prisoner’s release?’ Her cross-grained concern was not overlooked, however she strove to stay circumspect.
‘We broke none of our covenant!’ Kharadmon snapped. ‘Would that we had, and years earlier!’
No need to expound upon his sudden rage: on-going for millennia, the sparring enmity between Fellowship Sorcerers and Koriani Matriarchs. A foregone conclusion, that the long, vicious pitch of the order’s rivalry must entangle the pawn just wrested away from the covetous Prime’s close control.
‘You can protect him?’ Elaira pressed gently.
Kharadmon dissolved into a self-contained whirlwind that whipped up a cyclone of ice-crystals. ‘Asandir was forced to swear! He laid down an oath by the witness of stone, of Fellowship noninterference. Damn your Prime’s machinations to Sithaer! The terms that completed her claim of debt towards the Crown of Rathain have extracted that ruthless stay!’
Which bad news delivered a blow to weaken the knees. Elaira drew in a bracing breath. Under the astringent blue sky of altitude, chilled in the pine-scented shade of the rock scarp, she fought for the balance to curb draining fear. If few staunch spirits could match her bold strengths, none equaled the depth of her love for Prince Arithon. Or her steel endurance, as she dared to challenge the turbulent fury repressed by the Sorcerer’s shade. ‘You cannot lift even one finger to help,’ she accused in bald-faced distress. ‘What of the Biedar? Will their shamans stand guard for your prince? Now he’s freed, might they warrant his safety?’
The discorporate mage drifted to a freezing pause. ‘Who knows what might move the desert tribes to act? In this world, who dares to try them? Biedar wisdom lies outside the compact.’
Elaira gaped in dumbfounded surprise. ‘I never imagined! More tellingly,’ she added the moment her paralyzed wits sorted consequence, ‘has that sharp fact escaped the Prime Matriarch?’
‘Oh, past question, she knows.’ Kharadmon’s image unfurled again, smiling with forthright malice. ‘That sore point’s a matter of recorded
