and royalty, the white-gold signet had been worn by Rathain’s crown heirs back to the lineage’s founder. The inside bore the engraved inscription: ‘To my sons, from their forebears, back to Torbrand.’
Elaira cupped the emerald setting. Immersed in a seer’s trance, she focused her faculties into the mineral matrix. The imprinted tapestry of the ring’s history flowed over her opened perception. She sank slowly into the depths of the stone, aware of its multilayered legacy. Kings and sanctioned princes far and long before hers had stamped the whispers of their bygone lives in the ring. Unlike the focus stones wielded by the Koriathain, kept uncleared to preserve intact records, this jewel retained its past impressions under Fellowship precepts: its crystalline nature served human purpose by choice, in exact harmonic alignment. Elaira’s descent through its lattice became a light journey, untrammelled by conflict. Not every aspect contained within the jewel setting was laid open to her inspection. Wise enough for respect, Elaira bypassed those boundaries set under Sorcerer’s seals. The private memories from Arithon’s forebears stayed beyond her purview to access.
Her deep reach instead sought the gateway framed by the emerald’s inclusions, keyed only to her. A specific phrase, spoken three times by a man’s unbounded regard for her unlocked what no other could access. Chosen mate to the Prince of Rathain, Elaira alone could match and complete the bias of calm that once had enveloped a sea-side cottage in the impassioned moment of Arithon’s discovery that his pure feelings for her were returned.
She, only, recalled the arduous passage when the very same phrase was repeated: as a Sorcerer’s maze reforged their joined selves and scoured out all false reflections, man and woman had blended again, inseparable in mind and heart.
Worse, Elaira relived the last time, arisen on the wrenching hour when a false liegeman had betrayed Arithon into captivity. The moment revisited her in darkest nightmares, as the same outcry unleashed in extremity became their love’s bittermost affirmation. When Selidie Prime threatened Elaira’s life as the wedge to break Arithon’s integrity, third and final, his protest rang, still: ‘…Give me torture and loss, give me death, before I become the instrument that seals your utter destruction. Of all the atrocities I have done in the past, or may commit in the future, that one I could never survive.’
The echo, stone-graven, tumbled Elaira back into the moment she had faced death at Prime Selidie’s hands. Defenseless but never resigned, she could not fault the tragic choice, made while the throes of unbearable torment forced a desperate act, in resistance.
Shattered, yet defiant, Arithon spared her life. Saved her, by remaking as hers all the intimate joy shared between them. He ceded her everything: each cherished thought and every gathered memory of her encompassed within his experience. That sweetness of presence, treasured and true, was surrendered into her sole possession. Emptied himself, his given will yielded the part of his core self that was hers alone. Cut off and separate, he ensured that never again could the Koriani Order wield her mortality as the sure weapon to break him.
Royalty’s ring on her hand kept the record of Arithon’s grace within its inviolate sanctuary. An artifact of Rathain’s founding heritage, wrought under the sacrosanct auspices of Fellowship purpose, the signet’s protection predated the crown’s bond of debt to the Koriathain, which Asandir’s witnessed oath at long last had discharged. Within its safe haven, Elaira could let down her guard and dream past the reach of the order’s design.
The double-edged gift surrendered her senses to an unbearably vivid immersion. All that Arithon was, and everything they had been together enraptured her starved spirit and wrapped her in a state of exquisite tenderness.
Always, visceral sorrow reopened the wound. When night passed, and she woke to cold wind, snow, and solitude, the past remained hers, unsullied still. But the glory of the sacred dance was sundered, the unparalleled harmony of their union broken to spare her. If Arithon survived, he might recover the lost identity sheared from him to safeguard his freedom. Yet the part of his being conjoined with Elaira, sequestered for safety within Rathain’s seal ring, could not become reconnected. His enchantress retained her forlorn charge of the fact his male existence had once celebrated his true match. Unless the stake held by the Biedar at Sanpashir lent fresh insight to resolve the quandary, her heart’s future stayed hopelessly bleak.
Late Autumn 5922
Ripples
Warned by her balked scryers that Elaira’s resistance seeks contact with the Koriathain’s most ancient enemy, the Prime orders the enchantress stopped, at all cost, before she sets foot in Sanpashir; then she announces her boldest step yet to pin down the elusive fugitive: ‘We’ll engage the infallible use of a fetch and stir Desh-thiere’s curse to dog Arithon’s trail…’
The same night, torn from sleep in the Lord Mayor’s suite at Etarra, a fair-haired man thrashes awake in soaked sheets, chilled by the shadow of prescient nightmare: shivering, alone in the dark, he fears most to stand his frail ground against the consummate evil coiled inextricably through his being…
Days later, still troubled by dire portents, the Light’s High Examiner responds to the news that the search for the minion of Darkness near Kelsing turns up nothing but rumours of an elusive herbalist: ‘He left no object for a diviner to trace? Even a flask or a tie-string? That’s suspicious! Hold the croft that sheltered him under covert watch and deploy more dedicates to quarter the country-side…’
Late Autumn 5922
III. Change
Efflin’s recovery did not progress despite the efficacy of the remedies that broke his runaway fever. Constant dosing with cailcallow infusions, and the use of strong wintergreen poultices eased his wet cough for a time, even helped soothe his laboured breathing. Yet each hard-fought improvement failed to take hold. Days of diligent care did not lift his spirits or unseat the entrenched grip of his lethargy. Night after night, his reddened eyes dulled, until the once-vibrant spark in them faded to absence.
Since Tarens could not win this fight with his fists, he vented his helpless rage in the field, where hard labour behind the ploughshare granted his fury a harmless outlet. When the ox balked in the traces past sundown, he returned to the cottage, sore and snappishly tired.
Kerelie shouldered the burden of nursing, as well as the tiresome task of heating the gruel and bread sops for the listless invalid. Mostly, the trays returned to the kitchen with their picked-over contents untouched. Desperation led her to swap a precious crock of summer jam for a marrowbone from a neighbour. She soaked barley meal in the enriched broth in a hopeful effort to perk Efflin’s flat appetite.
The beef in the soup became equally spurned. Driven fuming out of the kitchen, Kerelie smashed the clay bowl against the back step in a fit of exasperation.
‘He’s not trying!’ she ranted to Tarens, drawn by her noise at a breathless sprint, with a stick snatched up as a cudgel to beat off a hostile assault.
But the only rescue his sister required was respite from an onslaught of tears.
‘Unlike you and me, Efflin’s not fighting!’ Swept headlong into her brother’s embrace, she pounded his arm in despair. ‘Why, Tarens? Why? He knows our family inheritance cannot be salvaged without him!’
Tarens held her close. Heedless of the barley mush strewn down her skirt, he pressed her marred cheek against a worn jerkin that smelled of sweat, harness leather, and turned earth. ‘I don’t know, Kerie.’ He let her sob, quite aware of the clean spoon and napkin that told over the source of her grief. Painfully wretched himself,
