‘I will have my weapons and armour returned.’ He stood planted, uncaring that he had not a stitch of cloth on him. ‘This foolish pretence is over. I am not sick, and you are not god sent, and your Talith was surely cut dead by a faction whose backing is rooted in necromancy. The cultists are secretive. They are powerful enemies. You have no trained knowledge, and less overt power, to withstand their black spells and vile practice. I have not just risked my life, or set my spirit in jeopardy, to watch you destroy all you have built for a woman who’s seventeen years in the grave. You must not return to Avenor! On my sword, if you try, I shall stop you.’
Lysaer was too depleted to rise from the chair. Yet the stare he returned raked with scouring contempt. ‘How dare you imply I should run for your sake.’
‘For all our sakes,’ Sulfin Evend said, wild. ‘Now, what have you done with my clothing?’
‘You don’t have the requisite power to stop me, with your breeches and sword, or without them!’ Rushed, Lysaer appended, ‘I am not ungrateful. I trust you to leave, if you fear your life’s compromised. Your possessions are there, in that chest. You may dress and take arms at will. Shall I date and sign your discharge today? Or will you deign to accompany my retinue, and maintain your post through the journey I’ll make, by way of the south road, to Hanshire?’
Which insufferable dismissal at last insulted Sulfin Evend’s intelligence. ‘You can’t haze my nerve, that way’
Violent as a winter-lean wolf, he flung open the clothes-chest, but found he could not stop listening. The proposal to take the roundabout route to Avenor at least showed a shred of good sense. The strong-box, as well, was sequestered and safe. The thoughtful valet had left that dread charge discreetly wrapped in his field cloak.
All brisk business, the Lord Commander snatched up his breeches. ‘You’ll need Hanshire’s backing if you’re set to pursue this. Also, the records found in the sealed vault underneath of Erdane’s library. If the mayor is convinced to make free with those, he’ll do so at sword-point, and not one bit for the love of his missing daughter.’
Gratitude restored the hint of a smile before Lysaer spoke, without adamancy ‘I must go back. A conspiracy has tainted my council at Avenor. Far more than my wife and child have been haplessly set in harm’s way. I created this government! Its soundness of principle is my avocation. As Tysan’s regent, the challenge is mine, to restore a just rule. I will not rest, nor will your sword, until this rot has been exposed and cut out.’
‘Then you had best pray that Dharkaron Avenger will forgive your rank arrogance and drive his Chariot at your right hand. Naught else can save you.’ Sulfin Evend’s dark head vanished in twill, then reappeared, recent grooming undone. He hooked up his mail to a jangle of rings. ‘You won’t have my sword right away, mercy on you.’ His glare lost no edge as he ducked to slither the field armour over his shoulders. ‘I’ll have to do my sweet best to advise, then rejoin you by galley after the ice breaks.’
‘This is not resignation.’ Lysaer smiled then, clean sunlight on snow. If his eyes shone too bright, the embarrassment escaped notice.
Sulfin Evend sat, busy with hose, boots, and spurs. ‘Help me find grace! I ought to be drunk, to be acting so feckless. I have an errand I have to run first. The bone-knife that enslaved you must be destroyed.’
Lysaer need say nothing. His point had been won. Wrung limp, he regarded his depleted hands and the letter caged lightly between them.
Sulfin Evend stood up. As he snatched in nettled haste for his baldric, his sideward glance settled and sharpened. He moved with dispatch after that, hung his scabbard, and wrapped up his discourse forthwith. ‘Liege, I’ll be calling your servants to set you in bed. Then I’m making rounds of my war camp. After two days, I expect to find shambles. Once my officers have orders, I’m taking the best horse in your father-in-law’s stables. Don’t ask where I’m bound. Your vaunted principles assuredly won’t stand it. If I come back unscathed, and if you’re not waiting in state at Hanshire with every fit company we have at your back, then yes. By all means. Give my written discharge into the hands of my family’
Dressed and fully armed, the Alliance Commander bowed before his liege’s chair. ‘Guard yourself well,’ he murmured in parting.
Silence answered. Lysaer had passed beyond conscious awareness. The discovery yielded a poisoned advantage: a sane intervention was possible, now. Act upon spurious opportunity, and Sulfin Evend might strip the false tissue of the divine cause. He might break the course of his sovereign’s willed future, through informed mercy and the brute force of his vested command.
Lysaer slouched in the huge brocade chair. His senseless hands lay loose in his lap, tucked over the desperate words of a wife he had played as a painted game-piece. Yet the hardness that drove every inhumane choice was not written into the man. Care-worn to exhaustion, exposed in the artless sleep of an all-too-human fallibility, the magisterial presence that had stood off Erdane’s mayor should have seemed reduced to its thread of mortality. Instead, the brazen commitment just spoken lost its overtone of brash arrogance.
The raw courage behind Lysaer’s resolve caught Sulfin Evend like a fist at the throat.
‘Mercy on you,’ he whispered, and spun on his heel. Too proud, too heart-torn to break trust with such naked vulnerability, the Alliance Lord Commander retrieved the wrapped strong-box and fled headlong from the room.
Too late: two sworn oaths and the contrary grain of his honesty pursued him beyond that closed door. Peace had been destroyed by the conflict of loyalties now branded into his skin.
Late Spring-Summer 5670
While dark cultists regroup from their surprise set-back, and a secretive liegeman rides out of Erdane, Sethvir of the Fellowship faces dilemma: with no available help from the field, and no remedy for his invalid weakness, the necromancers who bid to suborn Lysaer’s rule might yet rip the compact apart at one stroke…
Beating to weather against the stiff winds that presage the turn of the season, Feylind, who captains the merchant brig Evenstar, drives her vessel around the cliffs at Sanpashir, then wears ship, checks her yards, and ploughs a white streamer of wake toward her home port of Innish…
Trail-weary and silted with summer’s thick dust, a lone clansman crosses the hills of Caith-al-Caen; just past summer’s eve, he crosses the ancient Paravian way, and slips into Halwythwood, bearing the first confirmed news from the north concerning the Prince of Rathain…
Summer 5670
While storm followed tempest, and incessant rain lashed the western kingdoms to deluge and mud, the lands east of the Storlain Mountains enjoyed a golden, mild summer. The light breezes pranked and whispered through the forested wilds of Atwood. Gusts skimmed through the fringe of the East Halla farm-steads, and riffled like billowing silk through the grain-fields that bordered the coastal lowlands. The trade-roads were dry, and forage was plentiful, which caused the Mad Prophet a cracking irritation.
Since
