side, and snatched up the blackened spike of the fire iron. ‘You are a loyal man, Sulfin Evend. There lies your strength and your downfall.’
‘Enough caterwauling emotion, old dame.’ Eyes like chipped slate matched that ancient, blind stare. ‘How do you want your pledge satisfied?’
‘Set down your burden,’ the seeress replied. ‘Then, if I can, I will ease your straits, but after you’ve sworn a caithdein’s oath to the kingdom.’
‘Here? In Erdane?’ Prepared to unfasten the knots on the bundle, Sulfin Evend shoved upright, his brows arched with fierce incredulity. ‘That’s a perilous folly, since the Fellowship Sorcerers have already appointed the post to a reiving forest barbarian!’ This was insane precedent, set alongside the fact that the Lord Mayor would subject any man who dared to revive the old forms of crown charter law to a branding, followed up with a public gelding.
‘Folly, is it?’ The ancient wheezed through a breathless laugh as she heaved herself to her feet. Fire-iron in hand, she stumped over the carpet and fetched a slender birch-rod from a hook. ‘How little you know of your blood-line, young man.’
Sulfin Evend clenched his jaw, head turned as the crone touched the wood stave to the floor-boards. She began scribing a series of interlocked circles, her swaying steps moving widdershins.
‘I won’t hear this,’ he stated. ‘I can’t. I’m aligned with the towns!’ The witch had to know: he was a mayor’s son by birth. The duties invoked by his Alliance office ran counter to all that Tysan’s caithdein must stand for. ‘I’m not free to swear you an oath to the land. My rank as commander of Lysaer’s war host has already claimed my pledged loyalty’
The old woman ignored him. She sealed the last circle, invoked a charm that puckered her forearms with gooseflesh, then hefted the iron and flicked back the silk that covered the ceremonial artefacts. Dingy glow from the dips brushed the blood-stained bowl, with its dark band of incised ciphers. The horrid, black knife, with its slender bone-blade seemed to drink the available light.
Enithen Tuer gave his vehement protest a sorrowful shake of her head. ‘Then bear the cost of your pride, foolish man. The ones you oppose steal the living and usurp their identities.’ As Sulfin Evend turned pale, the crone nodded. ‘Yes.’ She flipped the shielding cloth back into place without ever touching the contents. ‘They are necromancers. Unopposed, they will suck off your prince’s vitality. When he is weakened enough to succumb, they’ll replace him with another, long-dead awareness. To have any hope of standing against them, you must invoke the latent heritage of your blood-line.’
‘My ancestress, the Westwood barbarian,’ Sulfin Evend snapped, startled. ‘Damn my forefather’s unbridled lust! You claim to know who she was?’
Enithen Tuer settled cross-legged on the rag rug by the hearth. Her marble eyes remained fixed ahead, as though the far past had been written across the murk of her spoiled vision. ‘The first Camris princes were seated at Erdane. Their ancestress declined the honour of founding the lineage of Tysan’s high kingship, did you know that?’
At Sulfin Evend’s vexed breath, the crone nodded. ‘Oh yes. There are records the vaults under the palace have lost. The Fellowship did not compel your first forebear. They would not, by the Law of the Major Balance. When their second choice, Halduin s’Ilessid, gave his willing consent to enact the blood binding for his future heirs, Iamine s’Gannley accepted his plea to stand shadow for that authority. She became the steward for Tysan’s throne. Her descendants have kept that tradition, unbroken, for well over five thousand years.’
‘Ancient history, old woman. This has nothing to do with me,’ Sulfin Evend broke in. ‘Nor does it bear on the life of my prince.’
‘It has everything to do with your threatened prince!’ the crone contradicted him, curt. ‘In your generation, the old line of the Camris princes has devolved into three significant branches. In primary descent is Maenol s’Gannley, oath-bound as Tysan’s caithdein. He has answered the Fellowship’s call for an heir. One branch, until this generation, bore the title of the Erdani earls, until its recent, importunate offspring established himself as unworthy. The other, descended matrilineally is your own.’
Sulfin Evend might have laughed for the evil, sharp irony. With his father now standing as Mayor of Hanshire, and his uncle, Raiett Raven, as Lysaer’s acting chancellor to secure the absentee mayorship at Etarra, his immediate family wielded the axe blade of Alliance power. That set them in direct opposition to s’Gannley, as dedicated enemies of the clans. Unless, of course, the preposterous tale was founded on senile fancy.
‘A fine theory,’ he said in scorching relief. ‘I might have believed you, had my great-grandame not been taken captive in Westwood.’
Enithen Tuer nodded. ‘She was there for her wedding. Her name, do you know it?’
Sulfin Evend was forced to concede he did not. The infamy was part of the family legend. The woman had left a blank line in the register, when his great-grandsire had forced her to wife.
‘Now you’ll hear why. She was Diarin, Emric s’Gannley’s first daughter. The clanborn blood enemy of Lysaer s’Ilessid is none other than your distant kindred.’
That news fell like a blow to the chest. Strong man though he was, his heart missed a beat: for why else should the Koriani enchantresses have pursued their strangling interest in his father’s offspring? Moved to slow rage, Sulfin Evend said tartly, ‘Old woman, which of my two bollocks would you take for your offering, that my prince might regain his autonomy?’
‘Your oath,’ said Enithen Tuer, not gently. ‘Sworn now, on your blood and then repeated in the presence of a Fellowship Sorcerer. You must promise to journey to Althain Tower, where you will seal tonight’s pledge in completion.’
‘No man could reconcile what you demand,’ Sulfin Evend blazed back.
The seeress stared him down. ‘There must be. I have seen. One day fate will force you to choose which of two loyalties you will sacrifice. The land does not bear a blood-sworn oath lightly. The powers you invoke will be greater than you, and they will not treat with duplicity. You will stand before them, stripped naked, young man. Heart, mind, and body, you will be bound true. No way else can I give what you ask for.’
Sulfin Evend returned her glare, anguished. ‘Demand something different! My own life, if you must! I cannot consent to dishonour.’
The crone watched him, saddened. ‘Then go. Abandon the life debt you owe to s’Ilessid. Walk away loyal, and do nothing.’
Yet he could not. Should Lysaer be suborned by a necromancer’s cult, the power at risk was too dire to unleash on an unsuspecting populace. The seeress had weighed the fibre of his character and measured him down to the bone. ‘Then fetch out your knife, and be quick, old witch. You have saddled me with the reckoning.’
Late Spring 5670
The unseasonable cold lingered on through the spring, blustering off the Bittern Desert and whistling over the stark bastion of Althain Tower, set amid the sere and frost-scoured hills. The tightly latched shutters rattled and creaked. Yet no influx of draught winnowed the candle in the snug chamber on the
