LITMIR.BIZ

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the burden of responsibility for his half-brother’s life. Lysaer would survive to find the second gate; there was one small victory amid a host of failures.

      The Master swallowed, felt the unpleasant tug of the scab which crusted his throat. He held no resentment at the end. Ath only knew how close he came to butchering a kinsman’s flesh with the same blade that symbolized his sworn oath of peace. Cautiously, Arithon rolled onto his stomach. Movement roused a flame of torment as broken bones sawed into flesh. His breath bubbled through clotted passages, threatened by a fresh rush of bleeding. The Master felt his consciousness waver and dim. A violent cough broke from his chest and awareness reeled before an onslaught of fragmenting pain.

      Slowly, patiently, Arithon recovered control. Before long, the Wheel would turn, bringing an end to all suffering. Yet he did not intend that fate should overtake him in the open. Death would not claim him without the grace of a final struggle. Backing his resolve with a sorcerer’s self-will, Arithon dragged himself across the sand toward the fisherman’s cloak.

      Blood ran freely from nose and mouth by the time he arrived at his goal. He reached out with blistered fingers, caught the edge of the wool and pulled to cover his sunburned limbs. As the cloak slid aside, his eyes caught on a smoky ribbon of steel. Cloth slipped from nerveless fingers; Arithon saw his own sword cast point first through the slashed leather of the water flask.

      A gasp ripped through the fluid in his chest. Angry tears dashed the sword’s brilliance to fragments as he faced the ugly conclusion that Lysaer had rejected survival. Why? The Master rested his cheek on dusty sand. Had guilt induced such an act? He would probably never know.

      But the result rendered futile everything he had ever done. Arithon rebelled against the finality of defeat. Tormented by memory of the lyranthe abandoned at Rauven, he could not escape the picture of fourteen silver-wound strings all tarnished and cobwebbed with disuse. His hopes had gone silent as his music. There stood the true measure of his worth, wasted now, for failure and death under an alien sun.

      Arithon closed his eyes, shutting out the desert’s raw light. His control slipped. Images ran wild in his mind, vivid, direct and mercilessly accusing. The high mage appeared first. Statue straight in his hooded robe of judgement, the patriarch of Rauven held Avar’s sword on the palms of his upraised hands. The blade dripped red.

      ‘The blood is my own,’ Arithon replied, his voice a pleading echo in the halls of his delirium.

      The high mage said nothing. His cowl framed an expression sad with reproach as he glanced downward. At his feet lay a corpse clad in the tattered blue and gold of Amroth.

      Arithon cried out in anguished protest. ‘I didn’t kill him!’

      ‘You failed to save him.’ Grave and implacably damning, the vision altered. The face of the high mage flowed and reshaped into the features of Dharkaron, Ath’s avenging angel, backed by a war-littered ship’s deck. By his boots sprawled another corpse, this one a father, shot down by an arrow and licked in a rising rush of flame.

      As the sword in the Avenger’s grip darkened and lengthened into the ebony-shafted Spear of Destiny, Arithon cried out again. ‘Ath show me mercy! How could I twist the deep mysteries? Was I wrong not to fabricate wholesale murder for the sake of just one life?’

      Gauntleted hands levelled the spear-point at Arithon’s breast; and now the surrounding ocean teemed and sparkled with Amroth’s fleet of warships. These had been spared the coils of grand conjury, to be indirectly dazed blind through use of woven shadow, their rush to attack turned and tricked by warped acoustics to ram and set fire to each other until seven of their number lay destroyed.

      Dharkaron pronounced in subdued sorrow, ‘You have been judged guilty.’

      ‘No!’ Arithon struggled. But hard hands caught his shoulders and shook him. His chest exploded with agony. A whistling scream escaped his throat, blocked by a gritty palm.

      ‘Damn you to Sithaer, hold still!’

      Arithon opened glazed eyes and beheld the face of his s’Ilessid half-brother. Blood smeared the hand which released his lips. Shocked back to reason, the Master dragged breath into ruined lungs and whispered, ‘Stalemate.’ Pain dragged at his words. ‘Did Ath’s grace, or pity bring you back?’

      ‘Neither.’ With clinical efficiency, Lysaer began to work the fisherman’s cloak into a sling. ‘There had better be a gate.’

      Arithon stared up into eyes of cold blue. ‘Leave me. I didn’t ask the attentions of your conscience.’

      Lysaer ignored the plea. ‘I’ve found water.’ He pulled the sword from the ruined flask and restored it to the scabbard at Arithon’s belt. ‘Your life is your own affair, but I refuse responsibility for your death.’

      Arithon cursed faintly. The prince knotted the corners of the cloak, rose and set off, dragging his half-brother northward over the sand. Mercifully, the Master lost consciousness at once.

      Shaded by twisted limbs, the well lay like a jewel within a grove of ancient trees. The first time Lysaer had stumbled across the site by accident. Anxious to return with his burden before the night winds scattered the sands and obscured his trail he hurried, half-sliding down the loose faces of the dunes then straining to top the crests ahead. His breath came in gasps. Dry air stung the membranes of his throat. At last, aching and tired, the prince tugged the Master into the shadow of the trees and silence.

      Lysaer knew the grove was the work of a sorcerer. Untouched by desert breezes, the grass which grew between the bent knuckles of the tree roots never rustled; the foliage overhead hung waxy and still. Here, quiet reigned, bound by laws which made the dunes beyond seem eerily transient by comparison. Earlier, need had stilled the prince’s mistrust of enchantment. Now Arithon’s condition would wait for no doubt. The well’s healing properties might restore him.

      At the end of his strength when he drank, Lysaer had discovered that a single swallow from the marble fountain instantly banished the fatigue, thirst and bodily suffering engendered by five days of desert exposure. When the midday heat had subsided, and the thick quiver of mirage receded to reveal the profile of a ruined tower on the horizon, the prince beheld proof that Mearth existed. Though from the first the Master’s protection had been unwanted and resented, s’Ilessid justice would not permit Lysaer to abandon him to die.

      The prince knelt and turned back the cloak. A congested whisper of air established that Arithon still breathed. His skin was dry and chill to the touch, his body frighteningly still. Blood flowed in scalding drops from his nose and mouth as Lysaer propped his emaciated shoulders against the ivy-clad marble of the well.

      Silver and still as polished metal, water filled the basin to the edge of a gilt-trimmed rim. Lysaer cupped his hands, slivering the surface of the pool with ripples. He lifted his hand. A droplet splashed the Master’s dusty cheek; then water streamed from the prince’s fingers and trickled between parted lips.

      Arithon aroused instantly. His muscles tensed like bowstrings under Lysaer’s arm and his eyes opened, dark and hard as tourmaline. He gasped. A paroxysm shook his frame. Deaf to the prince’s cry of alarm, he twisted aside and laced his slender, musician’s fingers over his face.

      Lysaer caught his half-brother’s shoulder. ‘Arithon!’

      The Master’s shielding hands fell away. He straightened, his face gone deathly pale. Without pause to acknowledge his half-brother’s distress, he rolled over and stared at the well. Settled and still, the water within shone unnatural as mirror-glass between the notched foliage of the ivy.

      Arithon drew breath and the congestion in his lungs vanished as if he had never known injury. ‘There is sorcery here more powerful than the Gate.’

      Lysaer withdrew his touch as if burned. ‘It healed you, didn’t it?’

      The Master looked up in wry exasperation. ‘If that were all, I’d be grateful. But something else happened. A change more profound than surface healing.’

      Arithon

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