LITMIR.BIZ

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while the clairvoyant tried vainly to comfort him.

      Sethvir recognized that blade. Memories of past events aligned like compass needles, pairing fact with circumstance whose significance shattered a calm that was legendary. Sethvir of the Fellowship whooped like a boy. In the time before the Mistwraith’s curse, that same weapon had been carried by an Atherian prince through the Worldsend Gates to the west. Three other royal heirs had fled with him, seeking sanctuary from a rebellion which threatened their lives. Then the Mistwraith’s conquest banished all sunlight; the Gates were directionally sealed on the promise of a madman’s prophecy, and the princes’ exile became permanent. Yet if the royal heirs had been abandoned to their fate, they had not been forgotten. At last, Sethvir beheld the first sign that the princes’ betrayal had not been in vain.

      The sorcerer released the image. Blue-green eyes softened with a reverie that masked keen thought. The mage who held the sword had also seemed no stranger; Sethvir himself had trained the man’s ancestor in the foundational arts of power. Only one possible interpretation fitted such coincidence: the sorcerer witnessed the birthpangs of the great West Gate Prophecy, the one which forecast the defeat of the Mistwraith and the return of Athera’s banished sunlight.

      Sethvir’s exuberance drove him to run from the library. Disturbed air raised dust from the shelves as he banged through the door and raced up the stairwell beyond; but his thought moved faster still, spanning a distance of leagues to deliver the news to his colleagues in the Fellowship of Seven.

       Interlude

      In another place, amid the weedy tangle of a fog-shrouded field, water dripped sullenly down the stems of last summer’s bracken.

      ‘I bring news of Dascen Elur,’ said an intrusive, familiar voice.

      Dakar the Mad Prophet started in surprise where he sat, drunk and soaked to the skin. A sigh escaped his bearded lips. Luck was a witch, to have abandoned him with the ale jug barely emptied. Dakar rolled sour, cinnamon eyes toward the sorcerer who approached. He tried to forestall the inevitable. ‘The prince who returns will be s’Ilessid, or I drink only water for the next five years,’ he announced with slurred finality.

      The sorcerer, who was Asandir of the Fellowship of Seven, stopped still in his grey tunic and blue cloak. Wind ruffled silver hair over features that split with amusement. ‘You speak of the West Gate Prophecy?’ His tone was deceptively polite.

      Dakar felt his stomach heave, and cursed silently. Either he was too sober to handle fear of the reprimand he knew must come, or he was too drunk to master the urge to be sick. Asandir was seldom lenient with his apprentices. Nevertheless, Dakar managed a sloppy grin. ‘“Ocean world Dascen Elur, Left unwatched for five score years…”’ he recited, obligingly quoting himself.

      Crisply, Asandir stole the following lines. ‘“Shall shape from High Kings of Men, Untried arts in unborn hands.”’ Hands capable of restoring order to a world that had known barbarous dissolution, decadence and blighted, misty weather for half an age. Asandir smiled, tolerant still. ‘But the foreordained hands are unborn no longer, my prophet. The time of deliverance is at hand.’

      The reference took a muddled moment to sink in. When Dakar caught on, he crowed and flopped backwards into a milkweed thicket. Pods exploded, winnowing a flurry of seeds. These were not fluffy white with clean health, but musted with the mildews of sunless damp endlessly fostered. ‘Where?’ demanded Dakar, and followed immediately with, ‘Who? s’Ahelas, s’Ellestrion, s’Ffalenn, or better, because I’ve a whopping wager, s’Ilessid?’

      But Asandir’s lapse into levity ended. ‘Up with you. We leave for West Gate at once.’

      Dakar inhaled milkweed seeds and sneezed. ‘Who? I’ve a right to know. It’s my prophecy,’ and he grunted as Asandir’s boot prodded his ribs.

      ‘Come with me and see, my sotted seer. I just heard from Sethvir. The Worldsend Gate out of Dascen Elur was breached only this morning. If your s’Ilessid is on his way, he currently suffers the ninety and nine discomforts of the Red Desert. Assuming he survives, that leaves us five days to reach West Gate.’

      Dakar moaned. ‘No liquor, no ladies, and a long nasty ride with a headache.’ He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, a short, plump man with a clever face and seed-down snagged like feathers in his stiff red beard.

      Asandir appraised him with a stare that raised sweat on cheek and temple. ‘No s’Ilessid, and you’re pledged to five years’ sobriety.’

      ‘Next time remind me to swallow my tongue with my ale,’ murmured Dakar. But the phrase held no rancour. Behind heavy lids, his cinnamon eyes gleamed with excitement. At last the wait would end. Through West Gate would come a descendant of Athera’s royal houses, and with him wild, unknown talents. ‘“These shall bring the Mistwraith’s bane, Free Athera’s sun again.”’ Grapes would sweeten again under a cleared sky and the vintner’s vats would no longer turn spoiled and sour…Dakar chuckled and hastened toward the dripping eaves of the tavern stables.

      Agelessly sure, Asandir fell into step beside him. The austere fall of his cloak and bordered tunic offered sharp contrast to the stained russet which swathed Dakar’s rotund bulk.

      ‘Prudence, my prophet,’ the sorcerer rebuked. ‘The results of prophecies often resolve through strangely twisted circumstance.’ But if Asandir was yet aware that the promised talents were split between princes who were enemies with blood debts of seven generations, he said nothing.

       Three Worlds

      At Amroth Castle, a king celebrates the exile of his most bitterly hated enemy, but fails to notice the absence of his own heir until too late…

      In a dusty hollow between dunes of rust-coloured sand, twisted trees shade the ivy-choked basin of a fountain from the heat of a scarlet sun…

      A world away from fountain and wasteland, an enchantress observes an image of a sorcerer and a prophet who ride in haste through fog, and droplets fly from the bracken crushed beneath galloping hooves…

       III. EXILE

       Who drinks this water

       Shall cease to age five hundred years

       Yet suffer lengthened youth with tears

       Through grief, death’s daughter.

      inscription, Five Century Fountain

      Davien, Third Age 3140

      The crown prince of Amroth awoke to a nightmare of buffeting surf. Muddled, disoriented and unaccountably dizzy, he discovered that he lay face-down on the floorboards of an open boat. The fact distressed him: he retained no memory of boarding such a craft. Through an interval of preoccupied thought, he failed to uncover a reason for an ocean voyage of any kind.

      Lysaer licked his lips, tasted the bitter tang of salt. He felt wretched. His muscles ached and shivered and his memories seemed wrapped in fog. The bilge which sloshed beneath his shoulder stank of fish; constellations tilted crazily overhead as the boat careened shoreward on the fist of a wave.

      The prince shut his teeth against nausea. Frustrated by the realization that something had gone amiss, he tried to push himself upright. A look over the thwart might at least identify his location. But movement of any kind proved surprisingly difficult; after two attempts, he managed to catch hold of the gunwale. The boat lurched under him. A stranger’s muscled arm bashed his fingers from the wood, and he tumbled backward into darkness…

      The prince roused again as the boat grounded. Gravel grated against planking and voices called in the night.

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