last bars were seated, the pin latches secured. Beyond, the last barrier was no defence, but a pair of ornamental panels, leafed in chased brass, which cut off the draught through the murder holes. Their varnished wood moved to Asandir’s touch, slid wide, and unveiled a vista of dazzling splendour.
Sulfin Evend stepped into the Chamber of Renown, with its ranks of exquisite, stilled statues. First to draw his eye, the centaur guardians lifted their antlered heads, winding their dragon-spine horns. Unwitting, the man gasped, incredulous.
His scarcely suppressed recollection exploded: of the creature that had once stepped, alive, out of legend last winter in Daon Ramon Barrens. The unsettling memory would not be denied, when overcome, he had witnessed an immortal grace that had driven him to his knees. Through the awe-struck aftermath, he had dismissed the event as a dream.
Until now, in cut stone, he faced the echo of that towering majesty, and more. This time, the centaurs’ stern sovereignty saw completion, placed amid the threefold matrix of the harmony Ath Creator had gifted to ease the sorrows that troubled the world. Now, Sulfin Evend beheld the strength of the Ilitharis Paravians, partnered by exquisite beauty. Exalted form spoke in the purity of tossed manes, and high tails, and in the stone hooves of the unicorns, dancing. Their wide-lashed jade eyes and slit pupils of jet reflected the essence of mystery. In captured grace and shimmering delicacy, their carved presence suggested a tenderness to arrest thought and unspin mortal senses. Amid their lyric, arrested pavane, the sunchildren clustered, blowing their crystalline flutes. The sculptor had captured the sublime joy and delight on their elfin features. Their radiant merriment made the very air ache, suspended in stark, wistful silence.
The Alliance Lord Commander stopped, lost his breath; felt the wrench as his heart-beat slammed out of rhythm.
He stared speechless with wonder. Then his eyes brimmed. Tears dripped unabashed down his chapped cheeks and splashed the rough cloth of his collar.
‘They still exist,’ Asandir repeated, steadfast. His saving grasp captured the metal-bound box, before his visitor thoughtlessly dropped it.
Sulfin Evend scarcely noticed his clamped grip had loosened. His longstanding distrust could not be sustained, not here, swept away by what stood unveiled in commemorative glory before him. In the moment, Asandir’s bracing touch offered a balm for stunned nerves, while his obdurate will gentled the mind through the reeling shock of its weakness.
Left unmoored, the man could do little but lean if he wished to remain standing upright.
For grief pierced into a shattering pain, that the light of such majesty should have walked in the world, and been lost, dimmed into abandoned forgetfulness.
Sulfin Evend bent his head, masked his face, crushed down by the force of his shame. ‘We are desolate,’ he murmured, ripped wretched by honesty. ‘How does your Fellowship bear our foolish insolence, that most of humankind does not spare time to realize, or far worse—that we blind ourselves with rank arrogance rather than acknowledge such overpowering greatness?’
‘How does man or woman bear cold, death, and ignorance?’ Asandir finished the grim thought himself. ‘Because they must, and for no other reason. To do any less would cast away hope, deny truth, and declare that caring and peace have no meaning within Ath’s creation.’
Sulfin Evend permitted the moth-light touch that steered him on and guided his way up the stairwell. Led into a carpeted chamber and installed in an antique chair, he managed to sit and brace his elbows upon a polished ebony table.
There, he endured until the raw fire of his anguish burned itself down to embers.
He blotted his cheeks, finally. Aware of himself, and embarrassed for his bruised dignity, he looked up and encountered the Sorcerer, seated across from him.
Wax candles lit Asandir’s cragged face. Two ages of weather had chiselled those features down to their gaunt frame of bone. The eyes, reflective as light on a tarn, gazed into places no man had gone.
Sulfin Evend caught himself staring; and Asandir, with an unlooked-for calm, permitted that uncivil liberty.
Observed at close hand, the Sorcerer’s patience seemed nothing less than formidable. An unquiet shadow, or some ravaging horror had been the force that annealed his tenacious endurance. Behind his stark power, which wore no disguise, Sulfin Evend sensed more: the lurking spark of a wistful joy, and a dauntless strength tempered by what was in fact an uncompromised well of serenity.
‘People have reason to fear you,’ the Lord Commander insisted, but quietly.
Asandir did not move. ‘They fear their beliefs.’ The question followed with disarming mildness. ‘Have I caused you harm?’
‘Not yet.’ Sulfin Evend glanced away. A pot of spiced tea steamed on a tray. Someone thoughtful had included a cheese wedge on a plate, brown bread, and bowls of raisins, nuts, and dried apples.
‘Sethvir insisted you’d be tired of game.’ Asandir already cradled a brimming mug, infused with the rich scent of cinnamon. The scatter of burns first observed at the windlass, unnervingly, seemed to be fading, the blisters reduced to rose pink against a lacework of older scars.
Again, Sulfin Evend averted his sight, only to become overawed by the details of his surroundings. Heraldic banners covered the walls, offset by a massive fire-place with black-agate pilasters. The Lord Commander identified the star-and-crown blazon of Tysan, then the silver leopard on green of Rathain, and left of that, the scarlet hawk of Havish, adjacent to the purple chevrons of Shand. The golden gryphon of Melhalla no doubt hung at his back. The inlaid chair that supported him had served as a royal seat for far longer than the Third Age. Before man, this room had hosted the sovereign grace of Paravian rulers, whose names and deeds framed the heroic legends of the early First Age ballads.
The King’s Chamber at Althain Tower had heard Halduin s’Ilessid swear his blood oath of crown service. Here, Iamine s’Gannley would have stood witness, assuming a charge still borne by an heir who now skulked in the wilds of Camris.
Weighed by that past, and distressed by his errand, Sulfin Evend remembered the iron-bound coffer, mislaid since the moment he had witlessly lowered his guard.
‘Your burden is safe.’ Asandir tipped his head toward the mantel. There the coffer rested, still locked. He moved one hand, but did nothing more than reach for the tea-pot. ‘You look like a man in need of refreshment. Or will you hold out as the victim of nursery tales, which warn against sharing food or drink with my Fellowship?’ The glint of a smile came and went as Asandir filled a mug, then pushed the honey-pot across the table.
Eyebrows raised, the Sorcerer waited again. When Sulfin Evend left his offering untouched, he shrugged. ‘Crumbs won’t harm the ebony’
Then, as his visitor failed to relax, the Sorcerer checked a sigh of incredulous, caustic impatience. ‘Mother of mercy! The tea is quite normal, imported from Shand, and whatever plain fare we set before guests, the food is by no means ensorcelled.’
With that, eyes half-lidded, Asandir lifted his own steaming vessel and sipped.
Sulfin Evend managed the semblance of courtesy, stirred unsteady fingers, and spooned out a dollop of honey. ‘My nurse was more graphic’ He talked to forestall nervousness. ‘She claimed that your Fellowship tore the hearts out of babies and ate them.’
‘Raw and still beating?’ Asandir
