LITMIR.BIZ

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still!’ Arithon’s command jarred like a blow. ‘I’m not planning to kill you.’

      Angered enough to throttle the words in his enemy’s throat, Lysaer forced himself to wait while smoke-dark steel rose and rested like a thin line of ice against his neck.

      Arithon raised the flask to Lysaer’s lips. ‘Take three swallows, no more.’

      The prince considered refusing but the wet against his mouth aggravated his craving past bearing; reason argued that only the s’Ffalenn bastard would benefit from water refused out of pride. Lysaer drank. The liquid ran bitter across his tongue. Parched as he was, the sword made each swallow seem an act of animal greed. Although Arithon rationed himself equally, the prince found neither comfort nor forbearance in the fact.

      Moved by the hatred in the eyes which tracked his smallest move, Arithon made his first unnecessary statement since morning. ‘The virtues of s’Ilessid have been justice and loyalty since time before memory. Reflect your father’s strengths, your Grace. Don’t cling to his faults.’

      With a slice of his sword, the Master parted the twine which bound a wrapped package of food. His weapon moved again, dividing the contents into halves before his battered scabbard extinguished the dull gleam of the blade. Arithon looked askance, his face shadowed in failing light. ‘Show me a rational mind, Prince of Amroth. Then I’ll grant you the respect due your birthright.’

      Lysaer hardened his heart against truce; s’Ffalenn guile had seduced s’Ilessid trust too often to admit any pardon. With nothing of royal birthright left beyond integrity, self-respect demanded he endure his plight without shaming the family honour. Lysaer accepted cheese and journey-biscuit from Arithon’s hand in silence, his mind bent on thoughts of revenge in the moment his enemy chose to sleep.

      But the Master’s intentions included no rest. The moment their meagre meal was finished, he ordered the prince to his feet.

      Lysaer wasted no resentment over what he could not immediately hope to change. Driven outside impulsive passion, he well understood that opportunity would happen soonest if Arithon could be lulled to relax his guard. With feigned resignation the prince reached for his boots only to find his way blocked by a fence of drawn steel.

      Sword in hand, Arithon spoke. ‘Leave the boots. They’ll make your feet worse. Blame your vanity for the loss. You should have spoken before you got blistered.’

      Lysaer bit back his impulse to retort and stood up. Arithon seemed edgy as a fox boxed in a wolf’s den; perhaps his sorcerer’s self-discipline was finally wearing thin. Sapping heat and exertion would exact cruel toll on the heels of a brutal confinement. Possibly Arithon was weak and unsure of himself, Lysaer realized. The thought roused a predator’s inward smile. The roles of hunter and hunted might soon be reversed. His enemy had been foolish to keep him alive.

      At nightfall, the sky above the Red Desert became a thief’s hoard of diamonds strewn across black velvet; but like a beauty bewitched, such magnificence proved short-lived. The mild breeze of twilight sharpened after dusk, swelling into gusts which ripped the dry crests of the dunes. Chased sand hissed into herringbone patterns and the alien constellations smouldered through haloes of airborne dust.

      Lysaer and Arithon walked half-bent with their faces swathed in rags. Wind-whipped particles drove through gaps at sleeve and collar, stinging bare flesh to rawness. Isolated by hatred and exhaustion, Lysaer endured with his mouth clamped against curses. His eyes wept gritty tears. At every hour his misery grew, until the shriek of sand and wind seemed the only sound he had ever known. Memories of court life in Amroth receded, lost and distant and insubstantial as the movements of ghosts. The sweet beauty of a lady left at South Isle seemed a pleasure invented by delirium as reality was defined and limited by the agony of each single step.

      No thought remained for emotion. The enemy at Lysaer’s side seemed to be a form without meaning, a shadowy figure in windblown rags who walked half-obscured by drifts of sand. Whether Arithon was responsible for cause or cure of the present ordeal no longer mattered. Suffering stripped Lysaer of the capacity to care. Survival forced him to set one sore foot ahead of the other, hour after weary hour. Finally, when the ache of muscle and bone became too much to support, the prince collapsed to his knees.

      Arithon stopped. He made no move to draw his sword, but stood with his shoulders hunched against the wind and waited.

      The sand blew more densely at ground level. Abrasive as sharpened needles, stony particles scoured flesh until sensitized nerves rebelled in pain. Lysaer stumbled back to his feet. If his first steps were steadied by the hands of an enemy, he had no strength left to protest.

      Daybreak veiled the stars in grey and the winds stilled. The dust settled gradually and the horizon spread a bleak silhouette against an orange sunrise. Arithon at last paused for rest. Oblivious to hunger and thirst, Lysaer dropped prone in the chilly purple shadow of a dune. He slept almost instantly, and did not stir until long after daylight, when mirage shimmered and danced across the trackless inferno of sand.

      Silence pressed like a weight upon the breezeless air. Lysaer opened swollen eyelids and found Arithon had propped the hem of the fisherman’s cloak with rocks, then enlarged the patch of shade with his inborn mastery of shadow. The fact that his makeshift shelter also protected his half-brother won him no gratitude. Though Lysaer suffered dreadful thirst, and his muscles ached as if mauled by an armourer’s mallet, he had recovered equilibrium enough to hate.

      The subject of his passion sat crosslegged with a naked sword propped across his knees. Hair, clothing and skin were monochromatic with dust. Veiled beneath crusted lashes, green eyes flicked open as Lysaer moved. Arithon regarded his half-brother, uncannily alert for a man who had spent the night on his feet.

      ‘You never slept,’ the prince accused. He sat up. Dry sand slithered from his hair and trickled down the damp collar of his tunic. ‘Do you subsist on sorcery, or plain bloody-minded mistrust?’

      A faint smile cracked Arithon’s lips. He caught the waterflask by his elbow with scabbed fingers and offered refreshment to the prince. ‘Three swallows, your Grace.’ Only his voice missed his customary smoothness. ‘Last night was the first of many to come. Accept that, and I’ll answer.’

      Lysaer refused the challenge. The time would come when even Rauven’s advantages must yield before bodily weakness. Conserving his strength for that moment, the prince accepted his ration of water. Under the watchful gaze of his enemy, he settled and slept once again.

      The three days which followed passed without variation, their dwindling supplies the only tangible measure of time. The half-brothers spent nights on the move, fighting sand-laden winds which permitted no rest. Dawn found them sharing enmity beneath the stifling wool of the fisherman’s cloak. The air smelled unrelentingly like baked flint, and the landscape showed no change until the fourth morning, when the hump of a dormant volcano notched the horizon to the east.

      Lysaer gave the landmark scant notice. Hardship had taught him to hoard his resources. His hatred of Arithon s’Ffalenn assumed the stillness of a constrictor’s coils. Walking, eating and dreaming within a limbo of limitless patience, the prince marked the progressive signs of his enemy’s fatigue.

      Arithon had been thin before exile. Now, thirst and privation pressed his bones sharply against blistered skin. His pulse beat visibly through the veins at neck and temple, and weariness stilled his quick hands. The abuse of sun and wind gouged creases around reddened, sunken eyes. Ragged and gaunt himself, Lysaer observed that the sorcerer’s discipline which fuelled Arithon’s uncanny alertness was burning him out from within. His vigilance could not last forever. Yet waking time and again to the fevered intensity of his enemy’s eyes, the prince became obsessed with murder. Rauven and Karthan between them had created an inhuman combination of sorcery and malice best delivered to the Fatemaster’s judgement.

      On the fifth day since exile, Lysaer roused to the cruel blaze of noon. The leg and one arm which lay outside the shade of the cloak stung, angry scarlet with burn. Lysaer licked split lips. For once, Arithon had failed to enlarge the cloth’s inadequate

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