prince did not object to the solitude. The radical shifts that rode his awareness made even light conversation too difficult. Since complex thought also unchained the wild reflex that invoked his matrilineal talent, the books in the library were too steep to assay until he had reforged his quietude. Arithon began by reviewing the disciplines learned as a child novice. The exercises of mind and body, precise arts that eased contemplation toward the resharpened focus of mage-sight, let him plumb the new depths unveiled in the wake of his ordeal in Kewar. He encountered the patterns that sparked his rogue farsight and gradually learned not to tumble into the scattering current.
As though veils had been torn from his inner senses, his vantage point straddled the volatile interface between mindful will and expansive thought. Activity prompted reaction too suddenly. Emotions exploded with juggernaut force. Arithon found refuge in the blindfold repetition of sword forms using a practise stick. He slowed down his movement until he was able to fuse the balance between his mercuric inner senses and the encumbrance of his earth-bound flesh. He progressed. Atonal sound let him test each vowel, then each pitch, until he understood the flowering charge awakened by note and by cadence. Since music invoked the octaves beyond eyesight with overpowering vividness, he tried poetry. The result, more often than not, lit and burned him. The lyrical joy in Ciladis’s verse could drive him unconscious with ecstasy. As his eye tracked the beautiful script, unfolding in ancient Paravian, he sensed the power and force in each word and saw their structure as ruled lines of infinite light.
The snug chamber where Davien housed his collection was a haven of carpeted silence. Carved shelves lined with leather-bound books towered over the wrought-iron sconces. Arithon sat, curled in a stuffed chair, while the architecture of the lost Sorcerer’s thought refigured the frame of his mind. He bathed in that radiance. Touched by grace that showered the air into sound, and refined form to exalted geometry, he embarked on a waking dream that trod the far landscape of the grand mystery beyond the veil.
Arithon shivered, lifted dizzy; overcome. He paused with closed eyes, and still saw. The cry of raw light poured through his skin and sang in the depths of his viscera. Beyond hearing, the Sorcerer’s art struck the heart like the shimmering peal of tuned bells.
Immersed in harmonics, wrung speechless with ecstasy, Arithon could not have been more ill prepared for the voice, charged with hatred, that spoke from the air at his back. ‘We are well met, brother.’
Exposed, wide-open to mage-sight, Arithon recoiled out of the chair. The book tumbled, forgotten. Before it had thumped in a heap on the rug, he mapped the invasive presence: the electrical touch of an auric field that matched the imprint of his half-brother.
Hackled, the Master of Shadow met Lysaer, who faced him over the edge of a drawn sword. No shielding space spared him. No thought might respond. The curse of Desh-thiere awakened like chain lightning. Enmity surged to throttle free will, a ruthless fist in the gut.
‘No!’ In the drowning, split-second before reflex forced violence, Arithon snatched back lost discipline and tuned his mind to the chord once raised by Paravian singers to Name the winter stars.
Grand harmony snapped all chains of compulsion. The ungovernable impulse to murder checked short, leaving him trembling and weaponless. Light-bolt or sword must take him defenceless: the blue eyes fixed upon him held murder. Still, Arithon sustained his adamant choice. Shielded in sound, he suppressed the brute drive of the Mistwraith’s geas and did not lift his hand to strike out.
The next second, the fair form in front of him shimmered. Live flesh dissolved, undone by a tempest of subtle light. The auric field changed, shifted upwards to frame another pattern of frequency. Blonde hair became a roguish tumble of red locks, laced through with silver-grey. The wide shoulders lost their elegant white velvets. Reclothed in a jerkin of sienna leather, the frame of the intruder become ascetically thinner and taller. The Sorcerer, Davien, stood in Lysaer’s place, his baiting stare devilish, and his smile a satisfied tiger’s.
Arithon bit back his explosive curse. Nerve-jangled, he stepped backwards, turned his chair, and sat down. ‘That was extreme,’ he managed, unsteady. His hands stayed locked to subdue helpless trembling. ‘Another test?’
‘Perhaps.’ The speculative glint in the Sorcerer’s dark eyes implied otherwise.
Arithon released a shuddering breath. ‘Your books stood at risk,’ he said mildly.
Davien’s smile vanished. ‘Did they, in fact?’
‘I wouldn’t rush to repeat the experiment.’ Three months had changed little: Arithon was far too guardedly wise to expect he might sound this Sorcerer’s deeper motives.
Davien’s curious nature kept no such restraint. ‘I thought you should harden your reflexes.’ He surveyed his guest. The informal shirt, tailored breeches, and soft boots clothed a wary poise, and the wide-lashed, green eyes were anything else but defenceless. ‘You don’t care to ask why?’
Arithon stared back in mild affront. ‘Whatever’s afoot, didn’t you just peel my nerves to prove I could handle it?’
The Sorcerer laughed. He spun on his heel as though to pace, then vanished from sight altogether. The instantaneous transition was unnerving, from embodied man to ephemeral spirit. As closely as Arithon had observed the phenomenon, he still gained no whisper of warning. Trained awareness yet showed him the Sorcerer’s presence: a pattern of energies fused with the air, just past the limit of vision.
‘You may not thank me, now,’ Davien stated, nonplussed. ‘Later, you’ll realize you’ll need every edge to secure your continued survival.’
But Arithon refused to rise to the bait. Instead, he retrieved the dropped book, smoothed mussed pages, and traced a longing touch down the elegant lines of inked script. ‘Ciladis was a healer?’ he inquired point-blank.
‘Beyond compare.’ Davien permitted the sharp change in subject. ‘I have copies of his notes, and his herbals. Are you asking to see them?’
‘Begging,’ said Arithon. ‘Is it true, that small song-birds flocked in his presence?’
‘Near enough.’ The chill that demarked the Sorcerer’s essence poured across the carpeted chamber. An ambry creaked open. ‘Here. The texts you will want are bound in green leather. Of us all, Ciladis was the least shielded. More than finches found joy in his presence.’
Davien’s essence hovered a short distance away. When Arithon made no immediate move to accept the offered volumes, he added, ‘No traps, no more tests. Where the memory of Ciladis is concerned, the deceit would be a desecration. Any knowledge he left is yours for the taking.’
Arithon considered that phrasing, struck thoughtful. ‘Your use of past tense was what caught my attention.’ Then he added, ‘Though you don’t think your missing colleague is dead.’
‘No.’ Davien moved, the fanned breath of his passage too slight to displace the flames in the sconces. ‘The bindings laid on us by Athera’s dragons transcended physical death. As you’ve seen.’
The pause lagged. Moved by bardic instinct, Arithon stayed listening.
Then Davien said, ‘It is not spoken, between us. But the fear is quite real, that something, somewhere, may be holding Ciladis in captivity’
The beloved colleague: who had searched for the vanished Paravians and who had never come back. Since that disappearance cast too deep a shadow, Arithon again shifted topic. ‘I do realize
