LITMIR.BIZ

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maid snapped erect with a squeal and the quilts jerked, the victim beneath galvanized to a fish-flop start of surprise. A fondling hand recoiled from under a froth of lace petticoats as Dakar swivelled cinnamon eyes, widened now to rolling rings of white.

      The tableau endured a frozen moment. Already pale, the sorcerer’s wounded apprentice gasped a bitten-off curse, then to outward appearance fell comatose.

      ‘Out!’ Asandir jerked his chin toward the girl, who cast aside dignity, gathered her skirts above her knees and fled trailing unlaced furbelows.

      As her footsteps dwindled down the corridor, the sorcerer kicked the door closed. A paralysed stillness descended, against which the rumble of ale tuns over cobbles seemed to thunder off the courtyard walls outside. Beyond the opened shutter, the call of the changing watch drifted off the wall walks, mingled with the bellow of the baker’s oaths as he collared a laggard scullion. The yap of gambolling puppies, the grind of wagons across Ostermere market and the screeling cries of scavenging gulls seemed unreal, even dreamlike, before the stark tension in the room.

      Asandir first addressed the king, who waited, frowning thoughtfully. ‘Although I ask that the secrets of mages be kept from common knowledge in your court, I would have you understand just how far my apprentice has misled you.’ He stepped to Dakar’s bedside and with no shred of solicitude, ripped away quilting and sheets.

      Dakar bit his lip, poker stiff, while his master yanked off the sodden dressing that swaddled the side the baking girl’s husband had punctured.

      The linen came free, gory as any bandage might be if pulled untimely from a mortal wound. Except the flesh beneath was unmarked.

      King Eldir gaped in surprise.

      Dakar,’ Asandir informed, ‘is this day five hundred and eighty-seven years old. He has longevity training. As you see, the suffering of wounds and illness is entirely within his powers to mend.’

      ‘He was in no danger,’ Eldir stated in rising, incredulous fury. He folded his arms, head tipped sidewards, while skin smudged with the first shaved trace of a beard deepened to a violent, fresh flush. That moment, he needed no crown to lend him majesty. ‘For whim, the realm’s champion was sent out and told to run my fastest mare to death to fetch your master?’

      Naked and pink and far too corpulent to cower into a feather mattress, Dakar shoved stubby hands in the hair at his temples. He licked dry lips, flinched from Asandir and squirmed. ‘I’m sorry.’ His shrug was less charming than desperate.

      ‘Were you my subject, I’d have your life.’ Eldir flicked a glance at the sorcerer, whose eyes were like butcher’s steel fresh from the whetstone. ‘Since you’re not my feal man, regretfully, I can’t offer that kindness.’

      Sweat rolled through Dakar’s fingers and snaked across his plump wrists. His breathing came now in jerks, while lard at his knees jumped and quivered.

      Eldir inclined his head toward Asandir. ‘Perhaps I should wait for you without?’ Mindful of his dignity, he side-stepped toward the door.

      Alone and defenceless before his master, Dakar covered his face. Through his palms, he said, ‘Ath! If it’s to be tracing mazes through sand grains again, for mercy, get on with your traps and be done with me.’

      That wasn’t what I had in mind.’ Asandir advanced to the bedside. He said something almost too soft to hear, cut by a wild, ragged cry from Dakar that trailed off to snivelling, then silence.

      Eldir rushed his step to shut the door. But the panel was caught short before it slammed, and Asandir stepped through. He set the latch with steady fingers, turned around to regard the King of Havish, and said succinctly, ‘Nightmares. They should occupy the Mad Prophet at least until sundown. He’ll emerge hungry, and I sadly fear, not in the least bit chastened.’ Between one breath and the next, the sorcerer recovered his humour. ‘Do I owe you for more than your guardsmen’s allotment of gold buttons?’

      ‘Not me.’ Eldir sighed, strain and uncertainty returned to pull at the corners of his mouth. ‘The oldest son of the town seneschal staked his mother’s jewellery on bad cards, and I’m not sure exactly who started the dare. But the cook’s fattened hog escaped its pen. The creature wound up in a warehouse and spoiled the raw wool consigned for the dyers at Narms. Truth to tell, the guild master’s council of Ostermere is howling for Dakar’s blood. My guard captain held orders to clap him in chains when the fight broke out in the kitchen.’

      ‘I leave my apprentice to protect you for one day and find you exhausted by a hard lesson in diplomacy.’ Asandir’s grin flashed like a burst of sudden sunlight. He laid a steering hand on the royal shoulder and started off down the corridor. ‘From this moment, consider my apprentice removed from the realm’s concerns. Your steward Machiel should be able to guard your safety well enough, since you’ve managed to hold Havish secure through Dakar’s irresponsible worst. I’ve decided exactly what I shall do with our errant prophet and I doubt he takes it well.’

      ‘You’d punish him further?’ The habits of an unassuming boyhood still with him, Eldir paused by the window-seat to gather his discarded state finery. ‘What could be worse than harrowing the man with uninterrupted bad dreams?’

      ‘Very little.’ Asandir’s eyes gleamed with sharp irony. ‘When Dakar awakens, you will send him from court on a travelling allowance I’ll leave for his reassignment. Tell him his task is to keep Prince Arithon of Rathain from getting murdered by Etarra’s new division of field troops.’

      Eldir stopped cold in the corridor. After five years, accounts were still repeated of the bloody war that had slaughtered two thirds of Etarra’s garrison and left the northern clansmen feal to Arithon nearly decimated in the cause of defending his life. Motivated by a feud between half-brothers embroiled in bitter enmity; lent deadly stakes by the same powers of sorcery that had once defeated the Mistwraith; and fanned hotter by age-old friction still standing elsewhere between clanborn and townsman, the conflict had since brought the unified opposition of every merchant city in Rathain. The prince with blood-right to rule there was a marked and hunted man. Every trade guild within his own borders was eager to skewer him in cold blood.

      Havish’s emphatically neutral sovereign made a sound between a cough and a grunt as he considered Dakar’s penchant for trouble appended to the man called Master of Shadow, that half of the north wanted dead. ‘I shouldn’t presume to advise, but isn’t that fairly begging fate to get Rathain a killed prince?’

      ‘So one might think,’ Asandir mused, not in the least bit concerned. ‘Except Arithon s’Ffalenn needs none of Dakar’s help just now. On the contrary, he’s perhaps the one man alive who may be capable of holding the Mad Prophet to heel. The match should prove engagingly fascinating. Each man holds the other in the utmost of scorn and contempt.’

       Petition

      The next event in the widening chain of happenstance provoked by the Mistwraith’s bane arose at full summer, when visitors from Rathain’s clan survivors sought audience with another high chieftain in the neighbouring realm to the west. Hailed as she knelt on damp pine needles in the midst of dressing out a deer, Lady Maenalle bent a hawk-sharp gaze on the breathless messenger.

      ‘Fatemaster’s justice, why now?’ Bloodied to the wrists, her knife poised over a welter of steaming entrails, the woman who also shouldered the power of Tysan’s regency shoved up from her knees with a quickness that belied her sixty years. Feet straddled over the half-gutted carcass, the man’s leathers she preferred for daily wear belted to a waist still whipcord trim, Maenalle pushed back close-cropped hair with the back of her least sticky wrist. She said to the boy who had jogged up a mountainside to fetch her, ‘Speak clearly. These aren’t the usual clan spokesmen we’ve received from Rathain before?’

      ‘Lady, not this time.’ Sure her displeasure boded ill for the scouts, whose advance word now seemed negligently scant on facts, the boy answered fast. ‘The company numbers fifteen, led by a tall man named

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