LITMIR.BIZ

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spotless brocades observed, wall-eyed, caught in the breach.

      Yet the enemy confronting the restored realm of Havish wielded no concrete weapon.

      As the imbalanced weather kept its savage grip, the sown crops were struck cold in the fields. The rich, coastal lowlands fared no better, as frost left the ground, and the driving storms drowned the farm-steads under sheet-silver puddles and ice melt. Swollen rivers were raised to boiling flood. Sea-going galleys were forced to stay battened, snugged to moorings within sheltered harbours. The roads were awash, soaked to bogging mud, and the looming spectre was famine.

      Eyes gritted red from a sleepless night, King Eldir slouched in his lion-carved chair. A large man whose presence might not seem imposing, his square chin wore steely filings of stubble and a plain circlet contained his tousle of fading brown hair. The realm’s scarlet tabard had no jewels or gold thread. His sleeve-cuffs were bare of embroidery.

      In words just as blunt, he addressed a point of vacant air by the window nook. ‘Our straits are grim, Luhaine. If we can’t charter blue-water ships and skilled captains, the reserve stores we have can’t be shifted an inch.’ His irritation sprang from the exasperating fact: the best crews under sail in rough waters were associates of Arithon s’Ffalenn, whose name was political disaster.

      Eldir ran on, his intent features tracking the vexed breath of air, now riffling dust from his tapestries. ‘If, as you say, the rains won’t cross the Storlains, then Havistock’s harvest won’t fail. But word’s in from Quaid. The passes to Redburn are still choked with ice. Mercy on us, the inhabited country-side’s devastated. Tomorrow, I’ll be faced with reports that more children are wasting away from starvation!’

      The discorporate Sorcerer paused in response, his florid style turned painfully clipped. ‘That’s not why I’ve come. Your treasury’s not wanting. You can hire more deepwater vessels. If you’re uneasy in bed with his Grace of Rathain—’

      ‘That choice of alliance could start a war!’ Machiel interrupted, busy hands scraping the firing pin.

      Luhaine lost patience. ‘We already have a war! I’m here to help you stay clear of it!’ To the High King, he added, ‘If you balk at liaison, then learn by example: Prince Arithon trained his captains by recruiting the cream of Eltair Bay’s smugglers.’

      ‘It’s his navigators we need, not his damnable sly habits!’ the Minister of Trade ventured sourly.

      ‘So who needs to know?’ snapped the spokesman from Mornos. ‘Men with esoteric knowledge can be kept under wraps.’

      ‘Who could guarantee their unsavoury characters?’ The upright, prim chancellor forgot his ribboned cuffs and folded angry forearms on top of the oil rag. ‘Would they change their stripes for a starving babe, do you think, when the same breed of henchmen cut throats in cold blood for the Master of Shadow’s assault at the Havens?’

      ‘That’s enough!’ Luhaine’s outburst shook the floor with an ominous, subsonic vibration. ‘Let us not sully facts with irrelevant hysteria.’

      Eldir stared back with unswerving brown eyes. ‘Should I be surprised? The one accursed name always saddles us with trouble. In fact, why have you come, Luhaine?’

      Machiel remembered, by his disproving glance: the last unsought message from a Fellowship Sorcerer had plunged the royal court into mayhem, playing host when Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn had required sanctioned oversight for the ransom of Lysaer’s first, ill-starred princess. As the pause hung, the caithdein broke in, sarcastic, ‘Don’t tell me the poisonous rumours are true? That Lysaer’s second wife has gone missing?’

      Luhaine’s disembodied quiet stunned the air to suspended intensity.

      Machiel unleashed a studied string of expletives, while the council-man who guarded the venues of trade leaned forward with fired agitation. ‘Dharkaron Avenger’s Five Horses and Chariot! An outbreak of plague couldn’t sever our rotten relations with the Alliance port towns any faster!’

      King Eldir’s jaundiced calm remained fixed, even dangerous, as he challenged the Sorcerer’s silence. ‘Are you here to tell me an estranged royal wife will be scratching at my door and begging for sanctuary?’

      ‘No one knows what Lady Ellaine will choose,’ Luhaine responded with acid delicacy. Tired of breaking Sethvir’s packets of bad news, he would not give way and temporize. The straight possibility the princess might look south for safety could destroy the last, frayed thread of diplomacy between Havish and Tysan. Strained relations, on top of the ravages of famine, were going to rattle Avenor’s choleric ambassador harder still. ‘Served with timely warning, you can field the problem with diplomacy. I remind your Grace: the lady has borne a living son to s’Ilessid. Since she won’t realize her status under charter law, she could be advised of the fact she’s entitled to ask our Fellowship for assistance.’

      Before the harsh point was argued, that the Sorcerers might not have a free hand to answer in time to forestall repercussions, Machiel interrupted. ‘But Lysaer’s son passed Fate’s Wheel. Got himself scorched to heroic cinders by a Khadrim, so we heard.’ Never fully at ease within walls, the forest-bred steward retrieved the cross-bow stock and used his skinning knife to ream out the quarrel slot. ‘We were led to understand that breaking news of the tragedy was what caused his mother’s crazed flight in the first place.’

      ‘Not exactly.’ The Sorcerer’s shade whisked over the patterned carpet, fanning groomed heads and lace and riffling the coals in the grate to a sullen flare of heat. ‘Prince Kevor’s still alive. An arcane recovery, not yet widely known.’ Now poised by the mantel, Luhaine’s presence all but bristled the air into hoar-frost. He required to say more. But today his fond penchant for diatribe was cut short as a hammering gust battered into the latched glass of the casement. The draught that seeped through stalled his windy voice and engendered a freezing silence.

      A crowned high king attuned to all four of the elements, Eldir stood up. Braced short by his move, the wiser council-men stilled, while Machiel shivered outright and ceased his idle fuss with the workings of dismantled weaponry.

      ‘Spare us!’ Eldir cracked. ‘If it’s bad news for Havish, tell us quickly’

      Across the wrenched pause, Luhaine’s shade stopped cold as the urgent summons dispatched from Althain’s Warden exploded across hisawareness…

       …in Erdane, amid crawling shadows in a cluttered attic, a strong man stands naked within a raised warding and lays a flint knife to his wrist. His swift stroke enacts the ritual cut. As the flow of let blood wakes a flash of raw light, his shocked outcry reflects an anguished note of betrayal.

       ‘Oh yes, my fine man,’ whispers Enithen Tuer. ‘You have in fact consecrated that knife’s arcane properties. A binding act, born out of necessity, since that blade alone will enact your primary line of protection! Now listen well: here are the words you will swear, sealing your oath unto your dying breath, or take warning! You will fall to a hideous fate that’s far worse, and suffer the eternal consequence…’

      Luhaine recovered himself, jaggedly frantic. The dropped thread of his audience closed with a rush that distressed those who knew his staid character. ‘If the bereaved s’Ilessid mother should chance to make contact, she’s best left to believe that her royal son perished.’

      ‘Ath’s Grace, Luhaine!’ The king’s shout chimed through the complaint of cleaned steel, as he slammed his closed fists on the table-top. ‘Don’t ask this! I can’t! The very idea’s a straight cruelty!’

      The Fellowship spirit whirled in tight agitation, scattering maps and requisition lists, and setting goose-quills to flight like chased leaves. ‘Not in this case! Had young Kevor died, he could not be any more lost to her!’

      Machiel’s granite features went pale. ‘Dharkaron avert! A wicked turn, if the boy’s in fact fallen to necromancy!’

      ‘Mercy! No! Not in this case,’

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