could use a crystal to anchor your focus,’ Davien stated, bridging the chasm with words. The Sorcerer in his wisdom did not use touch. Compassionate restraint stayed him, and respect for crushed dignity, as his guest folded against the table-top, sickened with vertigo, and fighting nausea as his body rejected the upset frame of its balance. ‘I don’t recommend this, since you would not live self-contained, but create your stability in codependency’
Jaw locked, running sweat, Arithon gasped back, ‘There are, of course, precedents?’
Davien’s mercuric chuckle implied more than wry sympathy. ‘Oh, my wild falcon, there are not, in this case. The path you now walk is uncharted. You must find the way to temper your gifts.’
Recognition followed, provocative, that a facet of Davien’s piquant interest desired to witness the on-going experiment.
At the earliest, right moment, the Sorcerer did rise. He rounded the table and closed a firm hand upon Arithon’s shoulder, steadying him back erect. The contact soothed down his unsettled aura, for the roiling sickness subsided.
Davien added, in dry and astonished rebuke, ‘You are a s’Ahelas scion gifted with far-sight, and wakened. How novel, that you should be shocked or surprised. You are suffering visions in multiple overlay?’
‘Prismatic conscience,’ Arithon agreed, still enraged. Too plainly, he could not temper the back-lash set off by his loss of stability. Nor could he quell the riled suspicion that, like the skilled surgeon, the Sorcerer had lanced the latent pressure of his unconstrained talent deliberately. Cornered too deftly, he had to acknowledge the scope of his savage predicament. ‘The full range, from horror to exalted redemption.’
‘I thought so.’ Davien’s smile turned wicked. ‘Oh, I thought so! My wild falcon, you have found flight. Now you must master the currents. Know this: each of the futures you see holds a driving thread of intent that is personal, and quite real. Those probabilities that are dim, you must defuse by withdrawing your stake in their outcome. Those that are bright, you must align and nurture. Choice will prevail as you focus. You will redefine the depth of your mastery. But to do so, you must constantly sharpen your self-honesty to discern. Each moment demands that you build on your strengths. You can no longer afford the false haven of hiding behind your shrinking weakness.’
No course remained but to integrate the altered perceptions until their wild force could be reconciled.
Arithon leaned upon Davien’s strength, eyes shut, his strained face white to the bone. ‘Just don’t expect me to finish the meal,’ he said, taxed to desperate humour. ‘If I try, at this stage, no doubt I would slight your exemplary turn of kindness.’
Late Spring 5670
Still dazed by exhaustion, Sulfin Evend snapped out of a cat-nap at noon, disoriented by the sight of a ceiling adorned with vines in gilt paint. He stirred, encountered the bed, just adjacent, and Lysaer’s opened eyes fixed upon him. The Lord Commander punched the overstuffed chair that embraced him and straightened his aching posture.
Dawn’s pall of overcast had scudded away to unveil a sparkling morning. The clean linens threw off a dazzling glare, making the royal face propped on the pillows seem wrapped in a fine haze of light.
Braced to field autocratic resentment, Sulfin Evend met an expression of collected serenity that first stopped his breath, then forced him to scrape at his gritted eyes to mask his unguarded emotion.
‘You try a man’s nerves, unrelenting,’ he managed, the moment his tight throat released.
Lysaer’s regard remained unabashed. ‘I won’t ask. If my Crown Examiner at Avenor might wish to burn you for achieving my redemption, the rumours will only raise eyebrows.’
‘Hackles, more like,’ Sulfin Evend snapped back. ‘Don’t try that again. The bit player won’t stand the repeat performance.’
No move rustled the pillows, but the smile that threatened suggested a self-conscious chagrin. Then, said with unflinching care, ‘The dead priest, Jeriayish. Did his fell work with the scrying entrap me?’
Sulfin Evend chose unsparing words in reply. ‘His filthy blood ritual permitted the groundwork. But he was no master of dark arts, or necromancy. That kind do not show themselves, under daylight. The priest would have been no more than a link in a clandestine chain of suborned tools.’
Lysaer closed his lids. ‘I feared as much, as I pondered the quandary while waiting for you to awake.’ The fine hands on the coverlet again wore the ring bearing Tysan’s star-and-crown blazon. The seal was now paired with the diamond setting incised with the sunwheel of the Alliance. The glitter of gemstones stayed nailed in stilled light, as Lysaer pronounced with edged clarity, ‘Good men died in Daon Ramon. Their loss, at my order, has surely fuelled someone’s unscrupulous plotting.’ The burning eyes opened. ‘There won’t be redress, until judgement is done.’
‘You can’t dream you’ll fight necromancy,’ Sulfin Evend gasped, shocked. ‘Do you know what I risked to achieve your release? We are lucky to be here, breathing and free! There are horrors abroad in this world that even the Fellowship Sorcerers handle with wariness. I would die before watching the price of such meddling. You have no concept to measure the evil you might raise through your blindside ideals and bullheaded ignorance.’
‘More than innocents have been thrown into jeopardy, drawn by the Light into slaughter.’ At rest on the pillows, Lysaer said, unequivocal, ‘I cannot stand down. Not since an invested acolyte was involved! The integrity of the Light can’t be compromised.’
Undercut by a horrid, gut-sucking fear, Sulfin Evend refused to give pause through the stir, as the Blessed Prince signalled his valet to serve sorely needed refreshment. ‘Fool! Challenge that, and you’re baring your idiot neck to the knife! If your priests are corrupted, you will have to disown them! All their works are now suspect. You don’t know, in your absence, how deeply their claws have been sunk into Tysan’s crown council.’
Shown no break in that regal, unwavering calm, Sulfin Evend unsheathed his temper. ‘Don’t put on your airs, prince! You are no god, to call down the Spear of Dharkaron’s vengeance on a cult whose foul webs have been spun for thousands of years under the cover of darkness.’
Lysaer’s response came brisk, through the clink of porcelain as the valet doled out honeyed tea. ‘You have known such corruption exists, before this?’
‘Mercy upon me, I surely have not.’ Unthinking reflex let Sulfin Evend take the cup pressed into his rigid hand. ‘There are nightmares too vile. Madness lies on the black side of witchcraft. The wise talent steers well clear of that morass. Respect such restraint! There are fears you can’t counter through mortal awareness. Lacking the discipline of initiate mage training, no unleashed emotion is harmless. The entrapment of active attention is real. The slip of one random thought, made unguarded, can invite the fell things that poison the mind.’
‘Is this your best counsel?’ Lysaer said, bleak. ‘To tuck tail and hide without ever putting the question?’
‘Yes.’ Sulfin Evend sipped at the scalding tea, shameless in his need to chase off the creeping, deep chill of alarm. ‘Abandon Avenor. Revoke your sanctioned connections at
