LITMIR.BIZ

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formed object in Ath’s creation became touched into shared celebration.

      This was the raised harmony that tore down stone walls, unhinged oaken doors, and shot green, budding leaves from the hewn beams of the rooftrees erected by humans, unaware they had trammeled its path. For the second time since the Paravian departure, the solstice tide crested, aligned to an arrow of clear force. Resistances shattered. Obstructive disharmonies became swept away, immolated in bursts of flash-point heat, or else shaken asunder by vibration. Where the spate passed, the unbridled mysteries demanded no less than a burgeoning rebirth of life.

      Spiraled into whirling dizziness, Fionn Areth felt as though his whole being would take flight through the top of his head. He swayed, no longer aware of his hands, touched to the tempering megalith. The Mad Prophet’s shouted encouragement was lost. Fionn Areth saw and heard nothing else through that deluge of limitless ecstasy. The cascading tumult of sound unwound all reason and sanity. Hurled adrift, soaring beyond the earthbound ties of his moorland origins, Fionn Areth reeled as the boundaries framing his identity dissolved. Joy gripped him. Laughter burst from his throat, an irrepressible paroxysm that shook and rattled and shattered the fear in his heart.

      In the trampling rush of abandoned acceptance, he recalled where he had heard fragments of the grand chord before this: first in the spelled cry of a sword, drawn to spare him from death and fire, and later, in the timbre of a masterbard’s voice, singing to heal his torn knee. Then his last scrap of cognizance shredded. He drifted, unmoored amid the vast flux that imbued Ath’s creation with life.

      The suspension might have lasted one heartbeat, or closed the full arc of eternity. Fionn Areth could not finger the moment when time and space shrank him back into fleshly awareness. He understood that the lane surge was waning, the withdrawal of its tonic fire an ache beyond words to describe. He felt hollow, sucked clean, then grievously desolate, as under his hands the stone’s keening cry diminished into dumb silence. The gift of its presence had been all that allowed the clay senses to share the ephemeral event. Wrenched by the dulled aftermath, Fionn Areth realized he might bear a loss for the rest of his days that his mind had no means to encompass.

      The legacy was two-edged, in the way of all wisdom. Recast in the light of compassionate truth, the note of blind discord he could not sustain was his distrust of Arithon s’Ffalenn.

      More than shaken, the scalpel cut of the wind on his face chasing an unwonted spill of tears, Fionn Areth leaned on chilled stone until his clamped knuckles bruised from the stress. ‘I don’t understand. Who is he?’

      Out of the dark, and the harrying storm, through the jostling warmth of wet horses, the Mad Prophet gave level answer. ‘He is who he said: Rathain’s sanctioned crown prince, bound to serve by his oath. As you saw, he also bears living title as Athera’s Masterbard.’

      Fionn Areth swallowed. ‘That doesn’t explain everything.’

      ‘I have answers.’ Dakar for a mercy met nerve storms with patience. ‘They’re not simple, or short, or infallible, since at heart the man beats a fiend for complexity. He’s as human as you, but his motives can be by lengths more difficult to fathom. If you wish me to speak, you’ll have to stay long enough to hear through the telling.’

      Fionn Areth would make no apology for an upbringing meant for the tending of goats. ‘If I accept Prince Arithon’s offer of protection, I deserve to know why he has criminal charges for black sorcery on record against him.’

      ‘Ask what you will.’ Refreshed by the euphoric riptide of lane force, Dakar grasped the reins of the broad-backed roan gelding and swung his bulk into the saddle. ‘What I know, I’ll share freely, as long as you’re willing to ride. We need to set distance between us and Jaelot while we have bad weather to cover us.’

      Fionn Areth mounted the lanky chestnut, his first question dropped as he closed his heels to the animal’s steaming flanks. ‘What actually happened on the banks of Tal Quorin?’

      Dakar rolled his eyes. ‘You Araethurians don’t mince your words, do you?’ Grateful at least that Arithon’s last order gave him free permission to reply, he opened an ordered recital of facts that could wring tears from blue sky for sheer tragedy.

      Yet breaking dawn cast silvery light through the diminishing veils of fresh snowfall before Fionn Areth had exhausted curiosity. He rode faced forward, staring at nothing, while the horse underneath him followed herd instinct and trailed Dakar’s mount to a stop.

      Silence descended like muffling cotton, sliced by the trills of a chickadee. The sky to the east gleamed lucent aquamarine between scudded streamers of cloud. In a crook tucked amid the steep-sided foothills, beneath evergreens mantled like ermine-cloaked matrons, the Mad Prophet dropped his reins and dismounted. His words fell diminished in the bitter air as he announced his intent to set up a warded camp. ‘If you want to hunt game, be advised, we can’t cook. Koriathain have a knack for noticing fires. Their skilled scryers can sense a dying deer if they’re vexed enough for deep sounding.’

      No reply; just a determined rustle of clothing as Fionn Areth reined his tired gelding around.

      ‘Where in Ath’s name do you think you’re going now?’ Dakar cracked in ill temper.

      Echoes ranged back from the slab-sided hills and shook snow in heaps from the treetops.

      ‘Back.’ The Araethurian herder glared over his shoulder. ‘Perhaps you speak the truth. If so, I made an unpardonable mistake.’ Uncertain, in daylight, whether the event at the marker stone had been a dream wrought by enchantment to turn him, he said, mulish, ‘I would know if your prince spared my life in good faith.’

      ‘Well, you can’t prove a damned thing by riding straight into the scalping knives of Jaelot’s headhunters!’

      For answer, Fionn Areth dug in his heels.

      Quite able to move with astonishing speed, Dakar sprinted. In three bounding strides, he hauled horse and rider back to a stumbling halt. ‘Nor will I let you blunder cross-country, asking after his Grace’s true parentage. You’ll only draw notice from meddlesome Koriathain, then bring his armed enemies after you. No. You’ll do as your liege wished, and take Luhaine’s advice, and accompany me straight on to Rockfell. That way, we’ll both live to reach sanctuary. Once on board the Khetienn, you might earn the chance to ask certain questions in private. Though how you’ll make up for the cost you’ve exacted for Arithon’s bleeding kindness would leave even Daelion Fatemaster stymied.’

       Winter 5670

      Star Wards

      The discorporate Sorcerer, Kharadmon, was no spirit to wallow in setbacks. Reemerged from the labor of refounding the stressed chord of the sixth lane, he arrowed west on the winds of high altitude, his intent to resume the interrupted assistance he still owed the Guardian of Mirthlvain.

      He arrived with his spiked style of humor intact. The prospect of labor in a bog infested with the vicious aberrations spawned by Methuri left his sarcasm honed to an edge most cheerfully pitched to flay skin. ‘If I owned the keys to Dharkaron’s vengeance,’ he announced, downstepped through multiple octaves of vibration to condense as a current of feisty awareness above the agate focus at Methisle, ‘I’d wish all the iyats in creation would bedevil Morriel’s corpse. The mess she contrived to throw kinks in our work seems far too unnervingly calculated.’

      ‘You may not have weathered the worst, yet.’ His feathered blond hair lit jonquil by the ragged flame of a rushlight, Verrain stepped from the shadowed stone niche where he had stood vigil throughout the night. ‘Sethvir’s just sent you an urgent summons.’

      ‘Well, blow him a kiss.’ Kharadmon puffed on an irritated gust across the chamber. ‘He’s aware I’m much too busy.’

      The flicked draft doused the rushlight. Verrain uttered a spell cantrip, and the rekindled flame showed a face drawn taut and unsmiling.

      The spinning,

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