Areth cried, shocked. ‘Your crown prince risked death, first!’ Despite his ambivalence, the meddling Koriathain had wrought the bane that unravelled his destiny in the first place.
‘Fionn, be quiet! You won’t be betrayed.’ Too short and fat for his tether of chain, Dakar wrestled the pain of wracked joints, and pursued harried converse with Luhaine. ‘Yes, my fit of erratic behaviour disrupted their spelled sweep of the Kittiwake’s tap-room. But now we owe fines. We can’t lose their probes by seeding a wild rash of bar brawls. What do you actually suggest?’
‘Give them the whoring wastrel.’ Luhaine’s pause carried a poison simplicity. ‘Would any celibate circle of women, rigidly scrutinized by their seniormost peers, play the role of voyeur to keep pace with unsavoury company?’
‘Sithaer’s coupling fiends!’ Dakar gasped, half-strangled. ‘Oh, please, let them try!’ The order’s initiates were female, after all, with most of them blushing virgins. The calm state their scryers required for trance could scarcely withstand the raw onslaught of vice, with its bestial range of sensation. The spellbinder whooped, his eyes leaking tears. ‘You know, I could wreck those prim ladies through drink!’
Quartz crystal would magnify his drunken stupor. Even an experienced circle must falter, hazed out of focus as their snooping seeresses threaded their watch sigils through him.
‘Give them debauchery,’ Luhaine agreed. ‘Who would waste breath to comment? For you, rank indulgence is not out of character. The distortions such excess will spin through your aura can be made to mask my wrought binding to shield Fionn Areth.’
‘Well, you’d better not fail me,’ the Mad Prophet said, tart. ‘Wasting hangovers hurt, not to mention, my access to conjury is going to get pissed straight to shambles.’ Undone that way, he would be incapable of even the small cantrips to cure his myopic eyesight.
Luhaine stayed unmoved. ‘The stakes could go far worse for your charge, if Prime Selidie learns that you’ve balked her will by asking for Fellowship backing.’
‘I’ll bang myself witless,’ Dakar said point-blank. Before Fionn drew breath, he doused the inevitable protest. ‘The witches had you swear an oath of permission over the Skyron aquamarine. That tie has kept you in peril since the moment Prince Arithon snatched you from Jaelot. The Koriani hold on your life might turn out to be revocable. If so, you’ll need the trained help of an embodied Fellowship Sorcerer. Or else find your way to a Brotherhood hostel, and risk the chance you can beg Ath’s adepts to call down a divine intercession.’
‘If indeed, they would extend such relief,’ Luhaine temporized, ‘and provided you arrived with your freedom intact to ask for the grace of their sanctuary’ The nearest such haven lay too far removed from Dakar’s planned route to Alestron. ‘Very few supplicants who petition receive the fruits of exalted, wise counsel.’ The Sorcerer gave that faint hope his crisp closure. ‘You can’t sustain such a pilgrimage, herder. None pass the threshold to enjoin the high mysteries who walk with an unsettled heart.’
‘Should I argue mixed feelings?’ Fionn Areth attacked. ‘By Alliance tenets which might pose the truth, your Fellowship’s practice is tainted. The Light’s doctrine also holds that Ath’s Brotherhood is corrupt, suborned by the powers of Darkness.’
Luhaine’s presence recoiled.
‘Forgive backlands ignorance!’ the Mad Prophet cried. ‘Leave Rathain’s crown prince his preferred right to answer this.’
Yet Fionn Areth lashed out, goaded on to brash fury. ‘I don’t need—’
‘Shut up, you dolt! The bright powers of Athera are not Lysaer’s enemies, no matter who taught you to fear them.’ Dakar leaned forward, jerked breathless as his manacled wrists wrenched him short. ‘Luhaine, for pity! Respect the constraints of my bond to Prince Arithon.’ The spellbinder’s appeal gained a frantic, shrill edge, as the hair on his skin stabbed erect. ‘You know the young fool has a vicious tongue, and no semblance of manners when he’s been terrified.’
‘An apology would be civil,’ the Sorcerer snapped, vexed. ‘If the cant of Avenor’s false priesthood held truth, your yokel would no longer be using the blameless air to support his ungrateful opinions!’
‘For Arithon’s sake, don’t deny him your help,’ Dakar begged with strained dignity.
‘Help?’ Luhaine huffed. ‘I’d sooner converse with a Sanpashir scorpion. At least they don’t sting before they are threatened, and they are soft-spoken and gracious.’
‘Once, I was the hare-brained scapegrace,’ Dakar entreated. Warned that his charge might open his mouth, he dispatched a kick, underwater. ‘Luhaine, for pity! Grant me the favour. The delay from your summons to Rockfell Peak is what cost us our safe passage on Evenstar.’
‘There are limits.’ Yet the missed rendezvous with the brig scored a point that could not be dismissed. For the harrowing service just given to spare his strapped Fellowship from a crisis, the Sorcerer chose to unbend. ‘I can’t ease the constraints,’ he admitted, begrudging. ‘Technicalities cloud your present awareness. Fionn Areth bears a life debt, acquired at birth. Elaira yielded that tie under oath-bound duress to the power of the Koriani Council. Her retraction might free him, with Asandir’s backing. But at present, your lump-headed moorlander can’t ask that choice, or be traumatized by any-one’s act of grand conjury’
Though the cresting tide surged through the cell in black currents and immersed the chained prisoners chest-deep, Luhaine’s summary cancelled the needful alternative. ‘My colleague cannot spare the resource, just now. Nor have I the leeway to chase after an ingrate stripling as nurse-maid. You’ll have my warding as far as Alestron. From there, take to sea aboard Khetienn forthwith. Wring what refuge you can from blue water.’
To the bumpkin, inflamed by his feckless ideals and his suicidal confusion, Luhaine discharged his last word. ‘Dakar must escort you to safety himself. The wards that will hide you are spun through his aura. By your will, mark my warning particulars carefully! I can’t grant you a guarded shred of autonomy under my Fellowship’s auspices. Woe betide you if you should ever stray from the side of your oathsworn protector.’
‘Luhaine, wait!’ Teeth chattering, Dakar shouted to stem the rushed breeze of the Sorcerer’s departure. ‘What of the fee imposed by the Kittiwake? Hold back! Shipsport has passed sentence, and we haven’t the coin to defray the clerk’s fine or meet the landlord’s exorbitant damages.’
‘You do now,’ corrected the Sorcerer’s shade, his fading voice thinned to asperity. ‘The magistrate’s clerk will find an entry that states the fine’s paid in full in the morning. Farewell!’
The chained prisoners were abandoned to hollow darkness, scored through by the lap of salt water and the resurgent chittering of swimming rats.
‘Is he gone?’ Fionn ventured, his rage drained away to threadbare exhaustion.
Dakar cursed in spectacular, rough language until he ran short of breath. ‘Yes, Luhaine has left us. Bad cess to your yapping grass-lands insolence! Now we get to soak through a miserable night. Don’t try another damned word or believe this! I’ll leave your scared arse as chained bait for the witches and watch Shipsport’s vermin feed on your carcass!’
Late Spring 5670
