LITMIR.BIZ

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a translation of Name and redeem them, that’s a desperate, thin straw to grasp at.”

      “A thin straw’s the best hope we have at this time,” said Asandir with shattering dignity. “The logic is not hard to follow.” Taken individually, the scourging spirits could be bound through Arithon’s gifts. His rearing by mages already lent him an advantage of training to resist hostile attack and possession. “We are also in process of constructing defense wards to secure this world from invasion.”

      “I see,” Morriel said. “All this takes precedence over the cities we already have torn into war by the criminal charges leveled against this dubious savior.”

      Luhaine flared into rebuttal. “Neither one of the princes are expendable. Marak at this time is still choked in mists. Powers of light and shadow might still be used to entrap the wraiths on the planet. Even if the fell entities never try the crossing to Athera, our world is not free of threat. The wraiths in Rockfell Pit are imprisoned, not quiescent. The half brothers’ talent over shadow and light will be needed one day to help lay those trapped spirits to rest.”

      “Then confine the half brother most inclined to cause mayhem if you wish them both to stay living.” Morriel sat forward with slitted eyes. “Don’t deny you hold the power to do this!”

      “The issue of power has no bearing,” Sethvir exclaimed in fussy correction from the window seat. At some point, unnoticed, he had lifted the spoon and knife from Iyan’s hands. “You speak of two grown men born to free will, and not string puppets. Their lives are not ours to use for expedience.”

      “Are they not?” Morriel arose, wizened and bent under trains of wool wrappings, but charged to denounce with the stripping, fierce sting of white lye. “What a pitiful excuse! You act when you’re moved to, or how else did five royal lines come by their gifts in the first place? Why should your wastrel apprentice have taken the arrow for Arithon’s sake back in Vastmark? Oh, you dissemble very well. The curbed powers of our Waystone establish that point beyond doubt.”

      “Sethvir has curbed nothing,” Asandir contradicted. “The earth itself is your arbiter. What spells you impose by way of rank force, the land has been empowered to refuse. That is all.”

      “And are lives and children worth less than a storm or an earthquake raised by the raw whim of nature? What upstart arrogance!” Morriel startled to a sweet metallic chime as Sethvir tapped the spoon to the knife handle. In no mood for his mooncalf byplay with her servant, she raised her voice over the disturbance. “Release the earth’s imprinted memory of our crystal. Our help and its power may be sorely needed, to judge by the botch you have made back on Marak.”

      That moment, Iyan yelped aloud. He shot to his feet, seized the cutlery from Sethvir, and clashed spoon to knife blade in an energetic clatter of wild noise.

      “Daelion Fatemaster wept!” Morriel whirled on Althain’s Warden. “What have you done to my servant?”

      Asandir burst out laughing. “Let him restore the nerves that afflicted his hearing, apparently.”

      The Prime Matriarch blanched in shock. “Healed him?” Her dismay filled the room, since the act was no favor. The man’s value had been his inability to disseminate her secrets.

      Oblivious to all nuance, too elated to perceive a mistress’s embarrassing, ungrateful hypocrisy, Iyan whooped for joy, then chortled to experience the music of his own voice.

      “You should leave,” Luhaine suggested in a solemn bent of humor, “before something else more regrettable happens.”

      Kharadmon abetted in devilish, barbed irony. “Be nice and smile, or your servant could also acquire speech.”

      Which effrontery was too much; Morriel Prime lost grip on cold nerves and blazed into rare, scorching temper. “Ath curse you all for frivolous intervention! What you name restraint, I call cowardice! The Koriani Order is older than your Fellowship. Our first Prime Matriarch stood at the right hand of free governance before Calum Kincaid sold out his great weapon and became the destroyer of worlds. What are you defending in this land but ignorance? I call you tyrants, rank meddlers with what’s left of human dignity. Believe this. I shall not forget. Redress will be found for our damaged Waystone, and your Fellowship shall live to regret your unjust interference.”

      She grasped Iyan’s elbow and pried knife and spoon from his crestfallen hands. “Come. We are leaving.” She shed borrowed blankets, scooped the Great Waystone from the cushions of her chair, and demanded to be seen down the stair to the gates.

      “Good riddance,” Kharadmon announced on the eddy of air as the door slammed in the Prime’s departed wake. “The lady has a temper like a snake.”

      Sethvir disagreed with a tilt of his head. “The years she has endured in the seat of Prime office have driven her just a bit mad. Pity her, instead. She’s inherited a charge she can never pass on. Since her last candidate for succession died in the rite of passage, I suspect the complexity of her office has become too much for any new aspirant to bear. No initiate in her order, however well trained, could survive the transfer of power.”

      “One might have,” Luhaine interjected, more than usually thoughtful. “At least, Elaira shows spirit enough to endure.”

      “And count our good grace for the fact she is cast out of favor!” Sethvir cried in rife exasperation. “The current Prime Matriarch is headache enough, with her penchant to ally herself with Lysaer. A successor tied by love to Arithon s’Ffalenn would yield up a frightening collusion.”

       Loyalties

      Winter-Spring 5649

      In a clandestine meeting, Lysaer addresses the devoted captain of his honor guard, and a well-trusted healer who had tended the maimed through all the horrors of Vastmark: “You are sworn to gravest silence because I must reveal several dangerous truths well before our people have gained faith of a strength to endure them. Arithon s’Ffalenn was begotten by a demon, and his unholy powers have suborned Lady Talith to the point where she’ll need to be secretly confined…

      Safely returned since his audience on Corith, Earl Jieret, caithdein of Rathain, hears in relief the appeal of Caolle, his ex-war captain, who had fostered him since childhood, “My lord, the sword training of young scouts is more properly left in the care of my successor. I beg leave to go to the westshore and await the return of our prince. His Grace might deny the necessity, but a sworn liegeman who bears a strong sword should be there to serve him against the day he makes landfall…”

      When spring comes, and rumors fly that Lady Talith will make no appearance for the traditional celebrations, Avenor’s royal healer admits in gentle sorrow to the court: that in distraught state for her failure to conceive, the princess has retired into strict seclusion for the sake of her delicate health…

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