collar, stinging bare flesh to rawness. Isolated by hatred and exhaustion, Lysaer endured with his mouth clamped against curses. His eyes wept gritty tears. At every hour his misery grew, until the shriek of sand and wind seemed the only sound he had ever known. Memories of court life in Amroth receded, lost and distant and insubstantial as the movements of ghosts. The sweet beauty of a lady left at South Isle seemed a pleasure invented by delirium as reality was defined and limited by the agony of each single step.
No thought remained for emotion. The enemy at Lysaer’s side seemed to be a form without meaning, a shadowy figure in windblown rags who walked half-obscured by drifts of sand. Whether Arithon was responsible for cause or cure of the present ordeal no longer mattered. Suffering stripped Lysaer of the capacity to care. Survival forced him to set one sore foot ahead of the other, hour after weary hour. Finally, when the ache of muscle and bone became too much to support, the prince collapsed to his knees.
Arithon stopped. He made no move to draw his sword, but stood with his shoulders hunched against the wind and waited.
The sand blew more densely at ground level. Abrasive as sharpened needles, stony particles scoured flesh until sensitized nerves rebelled in pain. Lysaer stumbled back to his feet. If his first steps were steadied by the hands of an enemy, he had no strength left to protest.
Daybreak veiled the stars in grey and the winds stilled. The dust settled gradually and the horizon spread a bleak silhouette against an orange sunrise. Arithon at last paused for rest. Oblivious to hunger and thirst, Lysaer dropped prone in the chilly purple shadow of a dune. He slept almost instantly, and did not stir until long after daylight, when mirage shimmered and danced across the trackless inferno of sand.
Silence pressed like a weight upon the breezeless air. Lysaer opened swollen eyelids and found Arithon had propped the hem of the fisherman’s cloak with rocks, then enlarged the patch of shade with his inborn mastery of shadow. The fact that his makeshift shelter also protected his half-brother won him no gratitude. Though Lysaer suffered dreadful thirst, and his muscles ached as if mauled by an armourer’s mallet, he had recovered equilibrium enough to hate.
The subject of his passion sat crosslegged with a naked sword propped across his knees. Hair, clothing and skin were monochromatic with dust. Veiled beneath crusted lashes, green eyes flicked open as Lysaer moved. Arithon regarded his half-brother, uncannily alert for a man who had spent the night on his feet.
‘You never slept,’ the prince accused. He sat up. Dry sand slithered from his hair and trickled down the damp collar of his tunic. ‘Do you subsist on sorcery, or plain bloody-minded mistrust?’
A faint smile cracked Arithon’s lips. He caught the waterflask by his elbow with scabbed fingers and offered refreshment to the prince. ‘Three swallows, your Grace.’ Only his voice missed his customary smoothness. ‘Last night was the first of many to come. Accept that, and I’ll answer.’
Lysaer refused the challenge. The time would come when even Rauven’s advantages must yield before bodily weakness. Conserving his strength for that moment, the prince accepted his ration of water. Under the watchful gaze of his enemy, he settled and slept once again.
The three days which followed passed without variation, their dwindling supplies the only tangible measure of time. The half-brothers spent nights on the move, fighting sand-laden winds which permitted no rest. Dawn found them sharing enmity beneath the stifling wool of the fisherman’s cloak. The air smelled unrelentingly like baked flint, and the landscape showed no change until the fourth morning, when the hump of a dormant volcano notched the horizon to the east.
Lysaer gave the landmark scant notice. Hardship had taught him to hoard his resources. His hatred of Arithon s’Ffalenn assumed the stillness of a constrictor’s coils. Walking, eating and dreaming within a limbo of limitless patience, the prince marked the progressive signs of his enemy’s fatigue.
Arithon had been thin before exile. Now, thirst and privation pressed his bones sharply against blistered skin. His pulse beat visibly through the veins at neck and temple, and weariness stilled his quick hands. The abuse of sun and wind gouged creases around reddened, sunken eyes. Ragged and gaunt himself, Lysaer observed that the sorcerer’s discipline which fuelled Arithon’s uncanny alertness was burning him out from within. His vigilance could not last forever. Yet waking time and again to the fevered intensity of his enemy’s eyes, the prince became obsessed with murder. Rauven and Karthan between them had created an inhuman combination of sorcery and malice best delivered to the Fatemaster’s judgement.
On the fifth day since exile, Lysaer roused to the cruel blaze of noon. The leg and one arm which lay outside the shade of the cloak stung, angry scarlet with burn. Lysaer licked split lips. For once, Arithon had failed to enlarge the cloth’s inadequate shelter with shadow. Paired with discomfort, the prince knew a thrill of anticipation as he withdrew his scorched limbs from the sun. A suspicious glance showed the bastard’s hands lying curled and slack on the sword hilt: finally, fatally, Arithon had succumbed to exhaustion.
Lysaer rose with predatory quiet, his eyes fixed on his enemy. Arithon failed to stir. The prince stood and savoured a moment of wild exultation. Nothing would prevent his satisfaction this time. With the restraint the Master himself had taught him, Lysaer bent and laid a stealthy hand on the sword. His touch went unresisted. Arithon slept, oblivious to all sensation. Neither did he waken as Lysaer snatched the weapon from his lap.
Desert silence broke before the prince’s cracked laugh. ‘Bastard!’ Steel glanced, bright as flame as he lifted the sword. Arithon did not rouse. Lysaer lashed out with his foot. Hated flesh yielded beneath the blow: the Master toppled into a graceless sprawl upon the sand. His head lolled back. Exposed like a sacrifice, the cords of his neck invited a swift, clean end.
Irony froze Lysaer’s arm mid-swing. Instead of a mercy-stroke, the sight of his enemy’s total helplessness touched off an irrational burst of temper. Lysaer’s thrust rent the fisherman’s cloak from collar to hem. Sunlight stabbed down, struck the s’Ffalenn profile like a coin face. The prince smiled in quivering triumph. Almost, he had acted without the satisfaction of seeing his enemy suffer before the end.
‘Tired, bastard?’ Lysaer shoved the loose-limbed body onto its back. He shook one shoulder roughly, felt sinews exposed like taut wires by deprivation. Even after the abuses of Amroth’s dungeon, Arithon had been scrupulously fair in dividing the rations. Lysaer found the reminder maddening. He switched to the flat of his sword.
Steel cracked across Arithon’s chest. A thin line of red seeped through parted cloth, and the Master stirred. One hand closed in the dust. Before his enemy could rise, Lysaer kicked him in the ribs. Bone snapped audibly above a gasp of expelled breath. Arithon jerked. Driven by mindless reflex, he rolled into the iron-white glare of noon.
Lysaer followed, intent upon his victim. Arithon’s eyes opened, conscious at last. His arrogant mouth stretched with agony, and sweat glistened on features at last stripped of duplicity.
The prince gloated at his brutal, overwhelming victory. ‘Would you sleep again, bastard?’ He watched as Arithon doubled, choking and starved for breath. ‘Well?’ Lysaer placed the swordpoint against his enemy’s racked throat.
Gasping like a stranded fish, Arithon squeezed his eyes shut. The steel teased a trickle of scarlet from his skin as he gathered scattered reserves and forced speech. ‘I had hoped for a better end between us.’
Lysaer exerted pressure on the sword and watched the stain widen on Arithon’s collar. ‘Bastard, you’re going to die, but not as the martyred victim you’d have me think. Sithaer will claim you as a sorcerer who stayed awake one day too many, plotting vengeance over a bare sword.’
