which Diegan could say nothing, but only turn on his heel and retire to a bed where sleep did not ease him.
The following morning, the royal retinue left Isaer to rejoin its abandoned caravan, now moved thirty laboured leagues to the west. After the escorting honour guard trailed four ox-wains crammed full of pottery, patterned linen and dyed feathers. The mules bearing the last crates of Falgaire crystal took a dislike to the ox teams, which occasioned much swearing from the drovers.
Surrounded by confusion that stirred a third of the cavalcade into a brew of bawling animals and stopped wagons, Talith’s suave brother screamed orders until his teeth grated from inhaling airborne grit. He ignored the ragged crofters who had paused at their sowing to stare. If he also missed the hoofbeats that approached through the din made by children beating clappers to scare flocking sparrows from the seed grain, Diegan obstinately faced forward as the rider arrived and fell in alongside.
‘Stop sulking.’ Lysaer laughed to his uncommunicative future brother-in-law. ‘When the snow comes, we can haul the fancy feathers out for mattress stuffing.’
‘Did you look in those sacks?’ Diegan reined around his dust-caked mount, his calf gloves fringed with hanging threads where use had torn off the beadwork. ‘They hold goose quills. Stiff ones, for pen nibs. If you can coax my sister to sleep on those, I’ll pick you nettles to plump your pillows.’
Caught on a hill crest against sky, his gold hair wind-ruffled against racing fleeces of spring clouds, Lysaer regarded the riled profile of Avenor’s Lord Commander at Arms. He said in teasing merriment, ‘That merchant’s vixen daughter refused you, I see.’ Which comment got him shoved from his saddle into dung-spread furrows in just and indecorous vengeance.
From astride his snorting charger, Lord Diegan glared down at his prince, who accepted his demise without rancour for mud-spoiled velvets.
‘In Erdane, the headhunters’ league is lawfully sanctioned to torture clanborn captives for public amusement. As a prince in line for the succession, they’d hold a festival over your ripped carcass.’ Hurting in his affection as if his liege were an endangered brother, Diegan finished, ‘Will nothing I say dissuade you?’
Lysaer picked himself up, dusted loose earth from his breeches and cloak, then ascertained that one of his pages had recaptured his cantering horse. His eyes still pinned into distance, he said, ‘Wherever the Mister of Shadow lies hidden, whatever his current machination, he’s unlikely to be exposed without risks. I set out to bring these lands protection from his sorceries.’ Wide as sky, the blue eyes lifted to regard Avenor’s captain at arms. ‘Diegan, don’t ask me to reject a whole city just because its governor is petty, and terrified, and convinced royal blood can harm his position. We will ride through Erdane. Should I come to die there, then Tysan will require no prince. A townborn man like yourself will go forward to rebuild Aveuor and unify this kingdom in my name,’
The last time Lysaer crossed the Thaldeins by way of the Orlan Pass, the mountains had been mantled in mist and blizzard. Hastened then in the company of a Fellow-ship sorcerer, he recalled no landmarks beyond drifts and treacherous abutments of seamed rock. With the visible sky 4 ribbon of blue overhead, the scarp traversed today under knives of morning sunlight looked savage and strange, a tableau of broken slate overhangs, wind-chiselled ridges, and stands of gnarled evergreen slashed and skewed with the boulder-strewn scars of old slides. The road wound and jagged between buttressed peaks, a mere lip in places over vast, windy chasms of cold air. The forested valleys unfolded below like creases in a painted silk fan, delicately blued in haze and crisscrossed by the gliding flight of hawks.
Here, a raffish band of barbarian scouts had once dangled Arithon s’Ffalenn upside down from a rope over a precipice. Lent abrasive reminder of a deceit that had once beguiled his trust and friendship, Lysaer gazed down a cliff wall bared of snow and jumbled with bone-grey, splintered timber and stone shards. He could wish now that the knots in the noose had failed.
Had the Shadow Master fallen to his death on that day, seven thousand Etarrans would still be alive with their families.
Over the bends and the rises, the wagons rattled and groaned, their hubs scraping rocks scarred by a thousand such impacts, while the opposite wheel rims flicked gravel in clattering spurts over the sheared edge of the verge. On the approach to the high pass, the carter’s quips echoed through the narrowing way, until Diegan sent outriders ahead to clear the road. Once committed, the drays could neither turn nor manoeuvre; caught between their lumbering bulk, horses and mules could not pass, should wayfarers meet them head on.
Merchants who hauled goods through the pass of Orlan for that reason eschewed use of carts. Informed of the risks, Lysaer had ignored all advice. Mounted, exposed in the vanguard, he looked least surprised when three riders positioned abreast approached and blocked off the trail.
Their mounts were a matched set of bays in gold-beaded bridles; silken manes and tails, and caparisons of loomed wool fluttered and tugged in the wind. Annoyed to see his advance guard had lapsed in their duty to detain so small a party until the prince’s retinue cleared the narrows, Lord Diegan flicked his boot with his crop and began to swear.
His imprecations trailed tamely into silence as he noticed the leader of the trio was mounted sidesaddle. A woman; a boy in his late teens and an elderly man her sole escort, she carried straight shoulders impertinently mantled in a tabard bearing Tysan’s royal blazon. The habit underneath was of flowing black silk, her grey hair, close-cropped as any campaign-bound mercenary’s. Slung at a practised angle beneath her belt lay a baldric and a gleaming sword.
‘Fiends plague us all,’ Diegan said crossly. ‘Who in Sithaer is she?’
Lysaer raised a hand to halt his column in the roadway. ‘The lady is Maenalle s’Gannley, chieftain of the clans of Camris, and if her records can be trusted for accuracy, empowered Steward of Tysan.’ Then, his lips curved in welcome, he spurred his gelding forward to greet her. ‘To judge by the hang of her blade, I’d hazard a guess it’s the living hides of Isaer’s merchants she hunts to furnish her wardrobe. I’ve been expecting her most of the morning.’
‘You know her? You’ve met her before this?’ Belatedly pressed to neaten his wind-crumpled mantle, Lord Diegan expelled a breathless laugh. ‘You do have a plan!’ Lost to confounded delight, he urged his horse into step.
Fifteen paces beyond his honour guard, Lysaer drew rein. Uncrowned beyond the majesty of his sunlit gold hair, he seized royal prerogative and spoke first. ‘Lady Maenalle, well met.’ His nod acknowledged the elder, whom he recalled as her seniormost peer, Lord Tashan; his friendly smile was for the youngster, now grown, who had attended him as pageboy through his past brief visit, before he had joined his gift of light with an enemy’s shadows to banish Desh-thiere’s mists from the sky. In brisk invitation, Lysaer addressed the lady chieftain who had impressed him with her iron-willed fairness. ‘I go to raise Avenor out of ruin and hope you take joy in my tidings. Will you come, and bring your clans out of hiding to join in rebuilding the sovereign city of old Tysan?’
‘Alliance!’ Shocked to white-faced incredulity, Lord Diegan rounded upon the prince. ‘Are you mad? The realm’s mayors will never condone this!’
In the clan chief’s party, the grizzled aristocrat looked incensed. The young man seemed torn by a longing that drove his gaze sidewards and away; while the lady resplendent in Tysan’s state colours held her emotions so savagely in check that the sun-caught gold in her tabard flashed only once and fell still.
Lysaer inclined his head toward his outraged commander at arms. ‘Why waste the resource to retrain our new garrison to fight and manoeuvre
