LITMIR.BIZ

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wrapped his muck-splashed brown cloak closer to his lanky frame. ‘Ath’s Brotherhood already dispatched an adept from Forthmark to help Traithe. She won’t have to trek across Vastmark on foot. There’s a mackerel boat tied up at Ithish with a fishing crew willing to sail her. A friend of the Reiyaj seeress arranged it.’

      ‘The blind lizard still lives at one hundred and ten?’ Kharadmon laughed. ‘I’m amazed her brains haven’t boiled, all those years she’s spent staring sunward.’

      ‘A daughter apparently inherited her talents, and chose to maintain her tradition.’ The rushlight popped, shooting a shower of sparks. Verrain flicked off the lit embers, the scabs on his hands where marsh creatures had bitten silver-stitched by the gleam of old scars. ‘Things are not well at Althain.’ His black eyes swung back, concerned, toward the restless air where Kharadmon’s presence hovered. ‘Sethvir scarcely managed the strength to recall you. His word was delivered by the north wind.’

      While the mire’s pervasive, sulfurous drafts whirled off the discorporate Sorcerer still poised in a tight spin above him, Mirthlvain’s guardian shrugged and addressed the concern left unspoken between them. ‘Yes. The remedial spells you set for the barrier walls are going to decay over time. The flaw’s not disastrous. We’ll have until the spring spawning to mend them. The harsh winter’s my ally. Only the mudpots need watching while the swamp’s sheeted in ice.’

      Which words were a half-truth to gloss over dilemma, as very well Kharadmon knew. ‘I’m gone, then,’ he cracked on a gusty departure. But under the space he had occupied, his classic last word: he left a green sprig of briar replete with a perfect, red raspberry.

      Verrain completed a stalker’s step forward, laughed, and ingested the jibe. His generous, wide mouth still dimpled with mirth, he turned from the focus and retrieved the worn ash staff left leaning against the arched doorway. At least, he reflected in grim practicality as he climbed the stairwell to resume his rapt watch over the creatures that slithered in Mirthlvain’s bogs, Morriel’s grand upset had ensured the thaws would come late.

      Kharadmon soon shared the sorrow firsthand, that all was not right with Sethvir. He breezed into the northern latitude of Atainia and found every casement in Althain Tower’s library latched tight against the onslaught of winter. The precedent jarred; always before this the Warden left one window ajar to welcome the caprice of the seasonal winds.

      A transparent presence in the washed, citrine light dawning over the Bittern Desert, Kharadmon applied for entry through Shehane Althain’s wardings. Where his colleague, Luhaine, would have sheared through dense stone, he preferred dialogue with air, and slipped like a thief through one of the arrow slits cut into the turret over the gate arch. Within the defenses, dour granite welcomed him. He was ushered through the matrix of ancient stone toward Sethvir’s personal quarters. There, shocked surprise nearly felled him. All the clutter had been rearranged. Old bridles and snagged socks were nowhere in evidence. Every broken old artifact, each garnered stone oddity, even to the shells of land turtles and the cracked tea mugs filled with dropped feathers; every cache of Sethvir’s curios had been reordered to unprecedented neatness.

      Across an expanse of wine-colored carpet, a wizened little stranger in an adept’s snowy robes sat on the carved stool by the hearth. His gnome-clever fingers were busy restitching the last torn strap of a horse harness.

      As the poured chill of the discorporate spirit fanned past him, he glanced up and blinked mild eyes. ‘Kharadmon, I presume?’

      ‘Well, iyats don’t stalk here without invitation,’ said the Fellowship Sorcerer just arrived. His whirlwind review flicked the candleflames into a sputtering, pinwheel flutter. ‘Were you the one who tamed raw chaos to order? If so, don’t be surprised when Luhaine faints out of bliss. He’s badgered Sethvir for his sloppy housekeeping for thousands of years and gained himself no satisfaction.’

      ‘I had the help of two sisters,’ the adept admitted, embarrassed. The dimpled delight of his grin burst and vanished as he gestured toward the wicker hampers piled beneath the carved dragon legs of the writing desk. ‘We had to tidy up. No one could tell us where Althain’s Warden had stashed his herbals for healing.’ Tactfully gentle, the brother inclined his bald head toward the door of the adjoining chamber. ‘You’ll find Sethvir tucked in his bed. The sisters attend to his comfort.’

      ‘I’m grateful,’ Kharadmon said, heartfelt, then blazed an unswerving line of retreat to reach his overtaxed colleague.

      The room beyond was kindly lit by a beeswax candle set on the sill by the casement. Its softened glow toned maple furnishings in honey and gold, and nicked glimmers off the battered bronze studs of the clothes chests. The air held the false freshness of a well-kept hospice, the perfume of lavender, sage, and sweetgrass underlaid by the bite of astringent teas, and a decoction of wintergreen for sore joints. Sethvir reclined on a mound of down pillows, his thin shoulders wrapped in a goathair blanket. His beard and his hair had been combed out like lamb’s fleece, bleached and carded for spinning. The sisters who had gifted that painstaking care sat one on each side, mantled in the white robes of Ath’s service, bound at the hems by metallic ciphers stitched into patterns of blessing and ward.

      They arose on awareness of Kharadmon’s entry, bowed their heads in greeting, then swept out to allow him his privacy.

      ‘Should I have brought you spring lilies for a death bier?’ the discorporate mage needled in opening.

      Behind his closed lids, Sethvir was not sleeping. A corner of his mouth lifted in bleak humor, though his hands did not stir, and the eyes that flicked open were vacant as aqua glass. ‘If you’re going to ask flowers to bloom out of season, they prefer honesty to speculation. I’m only earth-blind to the fourth lane, now, and its branch meridians affect but one grimward.’

      ‘Red roses, then,’ Kharadmon amended, careful to comb his tonal range free of upset. Up and down the length of Sethvir’s aura, his refined perceptions measured the patchworked, golden flares where the adepts had spun careful nets of fine energy to bridge areas rubbed thin by exhaustion. With the compassionate delicacy of a master surgeon, Kharadmon applied the keen edge of his humor to refire the dulled lines leached by pain. ‘Some decrepit old layabouts will try anything to lure sweet-tempered ladies to dote on them.’

      Sethvir wheezed a puffed breath, too weakened for full-throated laughter. ‘Your incorrigible presence is welcome at Althain; however, the fact you’ve been called here when I’m unwell means the news is the black side of dire.’

      ‘The star wards went active? I’d already guessed.’ Kharadmon settled by the bedside, a revolving nexus of chill that nettled the candle to streamered smoke. ‘What can you tell me?’

      ‘Not much.’ Sethvir twitched an irritable hand under the smothering bedclothes. ‘I saw the guard glyphs flare red in first warning. We’ve got wraiths on the move out of Marak.

      How many, how far off, and what danger they pose lie beyond my stretched resource to answer.’

      Kharadmon flicked into a wind devil’s spin. ‘The adepts haven’t said?’

      Sethvir managed a fractional shake of his head. ‘If they know, they won’t venture discussion. They can’t intervene, regardless.’

      Better than any, Kharadmon understood the implacable stance held by the white-robed adepts: the wraiths were no less part of Ath’s grand creation. Even if their aberrant nature arose out of mankind’s meddling, the Brotherhood by nature embraced no conflict. ‘All the thorny sorts of problem fall to our Fellowship to contain, and just as well. Given nothing to do, you’d have Luhaine’s confounded lectures bothering your ears day and night.’

      Before Althain’s Warden could answer that jibe, the discorporate Sorcerer whirled aloft. ‘Don’t fret. I’m already going.’

      ‘There’s no one else I could call on to send,’ Sethvir whispered in depleted apology. Two images followed, ragged as ink stains on parchment. If their fuzzed edges were unlike the Warden’s usual crisp sendings, their

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