LITMIR.BIZ

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Prime’s mantle of purple velvet with its nine bands of office had been pinned at her neck with a brooch of red gold and amethyst. Her pale, corn-silk hair was clasped in mother-of-pearl combs, not the diamond pins Morriel had favored. No question remained that she wielded the powers invested with the Matriarch’s office. Her eyes watched all that moved, a sustained, nerveless focus as intent as polished steel rivets. A matched pair of ebony stands at her feet wore masked coverings, the ritual patterns of embroidered silk used to veil major focus stones. Flanking these, supported on beaten-ring tripods, were seven matched spheres of clear quartz attuned to the sixfold sigil for scrying.

      Lirenda let silent seconds elapse before speaking the traditional statement of service.

      Prime Selidie replied in a throaty, clipped alto, stripped of the sweet lisp affected before her whirlwind ascent to high office. ‘Did you think I’d be amazed by your uninvited entry? My page has already set out a chair. You will sit. Keep silent until my interview is done, and initiate Elaira receives disposition and final dismissal.’

      A prime’s direct order demanded obedience. Lirenda accepted the chair, her chilled hands clasped in her lap. Elaira was left standing alone before the dais, defenseless beneath the stripping regard of those surgically measuring gray eyes.

      ‘Come forward,’ Prime Selidie commanded. ‘We are private.’ Yet if no ranking Senior attended her wearing the veils of Ceremonial Inquisitor, the exchange promised the razor-edged tension of an inquiry nonetheless. The outcome might easily invoke a trial, bearing stakes severe as the supreme penalty.

      The victim must wait in unflinching subservience while her Matriarch posed the first questions.

      ‘You are called to serve because Arithon s’Ffalenn is still at large on the continent.’ Selidie paused, subtle in expectation.

      Elaira gave away nothing, her calm stance itself a statement of blistering courage.

      ‘There are factions marching who seek his death. You don’t wonder how he fares in adversity?’ Selidie leaned forward, extended an almond-fair hand, and tapped the crystalline arc of quartz spheres in sequence one after another. Power surged at her touch, waking the sigils of binding. The scrying stones flashed like turned mirrors with light, then resolved to display scenes of tight-focused color and movement.

      Even from the vantage of her seat, Lirenda recognized the streaming banners of town garrisons set on winter march across the bleak territory of Rathain. Etarra’s exemplary zeal had responded with eight field companies five hundred strong. Burdened with massive supply trains, slowed by freezing storms, their creeping progress advanced through the desolate terrain of Daon Ramon Barrens.

      Another quartz showed Darkling’s militia, armed men and laden mountain ponies breasting the chest-high drifts toward the foothills and the vale of the Severnir. The crystal adjacent displayed Morvain’s bands of veteran headhunters moving apace through the deep glens of Halwythwood, where startled deer fled before them. Beyond all question, the three forces marched to a unified purpose.

      ‘Your prince faces bad odds.’ Selidie tapped the fourth quartz in its stand. That one aroused to an actinic flash: spurred on by no less than Lysaer himself, Narms fielded a smaller, fast-moving force under the sunwheel standard. They marched the old way through Caith-al-Caen, while the raised blast of Lysaer’s gift of light dispelled the gossamer forms of the unicorns’ memories like so much torched silk before them.

      ‘The Alliance has raised the hue and cry, as you see. They converge on Ithamon, if trust can be placed in an estimation based on direction.’ Selidie flicked the next-to-the-last sphere to life, unveiling the trials of Jaelot’s pursuit through the haunted pass of the Baiyen. ‘Why should Prince Arithon seek haven, do you think, in the ruin of his ancestral seat?’

      Again, silence answered. Chin lifted, eyes wide, Elaira stood in squared quiet, the weight of the mantle she had not removed almost masking her small tremors of dread. Surprised to unwonted admiration, Lirenda locked clammy fingers and awaited the next step in this perilous testing of wills.

      Prime Selidie stroked the last quartz in line with the chisel-point tip of her fingernail. ‘Dakar the Mad Prophet is no longer free to play watchdog and royal protector.’ The glass polish reflected her immaculate hand, as well as the travel-stained initiate held trapped in the lucent spill of candlelight. ‘Elaira?’ Selidie cajoled with a cat’s concentration. ‘We know that the Master of Shadow is injured. When he raves, he tends to get careless.’

      ‘He mentions my name?’ Elaira provoked in the faintest flush of first anger. She had little tolerance for playing the mouse before figures of higher authority. ‘Or how else could you garner the foothold to find him?’

      Selidie straightened, the last quartz left blank. ‘He’s the stepchild of cleverness, just as you were never a creature of subtlety.’ Fine silk slithered like the whisper of ghosts as she whisked off the coverings that veiled the faceted jewels on the stands at her feet.

      The first spat the glacial glimmer of pressed ice, no less than the Skyron aquamarine. The other, a faceted amethyst sphere, breathed an aura to raise the short hairs at the nape. Its surface seemed to drink in the light. Spindled glints at its heart flared to restless violet, alive with sullen rage and treacherous intelligence. Even from safe remove to one side, Lirenda wrestled the fear raised by the unshielded presence of the Great Waystone.

      Elaira swallowed, the rough flush left by wind drained into chalky pallor. She would beg no reprieve. Facing the instruments of terrible, raw power that could strip her mind of free will, she managed the fiber to stop shaking. Straight in defiance, she transferred a glare like an equinox gale on the Prime in her seat of high judgment. ‘We have changed from an order of mercy to one that bends lives through coercion and force? How our founders would weep. Are, in fact, weeping. Or do their venerable memories not stand here as witness, imprinted into the same matrix jewels you invoke to enact your demands?’

      Which insolence snapped the Prime’s patience. ‘Be silent!’

      ‘I will not betray Arithon,’ Elaira stated, blunt as nails in a suicidal challenge. ‘If that’s what you’ve brought me here to achieve, let me clear the least shadow of doubt. I’ll cast off my vow of obedience, even welcome the punishment that makes final end of my love as your private weapon. Never again will I be the tool to gain leverage for Koriani politics.’

      Lirenda caught her breath, stunned. Against the Prime sigils, no sworn initiate held the power to keep personal secrets; Elaira had hurled down the gauntlet to compel her own immolation.

      On the dais, Selidie settled back in her chair. ‘You will not betray anyone,’ she rebuked in flat quiet. Her oval face gave no clue to her thoughts, the lucent flesh unmarked in youth, and the disciplined iron that showed no trace of emotion. ‘I am no fool, to misread the strengths and shortcomings of any initiate bound to life service. I will not abet suicide. Nor will I ruin a valuable resource over a textbook adherence to propriety.’

      Shocked to naked retreat by the point-blank rejection of her tactical sacrifice, Elaira fell back on bravado. ‘Swear, then.’ Prompted by her razor-sharp instinct for survival, she added, ‘Take oath on your personal crystal that I will never be asked to betray Arithon s’Ffalenn, nor coerce another innocent as crow bait to draw him into the hands of his enemies.’

      Selidie raised a silver-toned eyebrow. ‘Is your trust in my office so diminished? I have forthrightly stated my case. You are too strong a will to be wasted.’ Then, as Elaira failed to relax, ‘Ah, I see.’ She clapped petite hands, caught remiss. ‘You fear a repeat of Fionn Areth’s constrained fate.’ Coquettish malice touched her coral smile as she said, ‘Of course, you couldn’t know that plan was Lirenda’s idea.’

      But Elaira proved too wise to be swayed by the diversion of petty vengeance. ‘Morriel’s permission endorsed that mishandling.’

      ‘As a lesson, yes, to an eighth-rank enchantress who failed to unmask the true core of the test as a trap. In due course, Lirenda proved out the flawed weakness that disbarred her from the succession.’ With a girl’s

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