LITMIR.BIZ

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over one blue-cloaked shoulder. ‘Yes. He’s been dealt with already.’ Asandir changed course without hesitation down the darker of two branching alleys. Over the ring of the chestnut’s shod hooves he added, ‘You’ve already left an impression with the drifters. Don’t cause more talk in West End, am I clear?’

      He stopped very suddenly and tossed the chestnut’s leading rein to Lysaer. ‘Stay here, speak to no one, and simply wait. I’ll return with another horse and a decent saddle. Should you feel the urge to wander again, let me add that in this place, people associated with sorcerers very often wind up roasting in chains on a pile of oiled faggots.’

      Asandir spun and left them. Watching his departure with wide and unmollified eyes, Arithon mused, ‘I wonder what fate befell Dakar?’

      That subject was one that his half-brother preferred not to contemplate. Suddenly inimical to the Master’s provocations, Lysaer turned his back and made his acquaintance with the chestnut.

      Asandir returned after the briefest delay, leading a metal-coloured dun with an odd splash of white on her neck. His own mount trailed behind, a black with one china eye that disconcertingly appeared to stare a man through to the soul. Piled across its withers was an extra saddle allotted for Lysaer’s gelding.

      ‘You brought no bridle,’ the former prince observed as he undertook a groom’s work with fleece pads and girth.

      ‘The drifters of Pasyvier are the best horse trainers in Athera, and that gelding was a clan lord’s personal mount. It won’t require a bit. If you’re careless enough to fall, that animal would likely side-step to stay underneath you.’ His say finished, the sorcerer tossed the dun’s reins to Arithon. ‘She’s not a cull, only green. Don’t trust her so much you fall asleep.’

      From an urchin by the gates, the sorcerer collected a pony laden with blankets and leather-wrapped packs of supplies. Attached to its load by a rope length was the paint mare belonging to Dakar. The Mad Prophet himself lay trussed and draped across her saddle bow. Someone had dumped a bucket of water over his tousled head, and the damp seeped rings into clothing that still reeked faintly of garbage. The wetting had been as ineffective on Dakar’s snores: he rasped on unabated as Asandir drove the cavalcade at a trot through West End’s east-facing gate.

      Once the farmlands surrounding the town fell behind, the road proved sparsely travelled. The surface had once been paved with slate, built firm and dry on a causeway that sliced a straight course through the boglands that flanked the coast. Centuries of passing wagons had cracked the thick stone in places; the criss-crossed muck in the wheel-ruts grew rooster-tails of weed. The mists pressed down on a landscape relentlessly flat and silver with the sheen of tidal waterways edged by blighted stands of reed. The air hung sour with the smell of decomposed vegetation. The chink of bits and stirrups, and the clink of horseshoes on rock offered lonely counterpoint to the wingbeats of waterfowl explosively startled into flight.

      Reassured that the sorcerer had yet to denounce anyone for the illicit visit to the West End market, Lysaer spurred his horse abreast and dared a question: ‘Who are the drifters and why do the people dislike them?’

      Asandir glanced significantly at Arithon, who fought with every shred of his attention to keep his mare from crabbing sideways. The company of three departed the instant the half-brothers gained the saddle. Asandir led, and did not add that his choice in horses had been guided by intent; he wanted Arithon kept preoccupied. ‘Since the rebellion which threw down the high kings, the drifters have been nomads. They breed horses in the grasslands of Pasyvier and mostly keep to themselves. The townsmen are wary of them because their ancestors once ruled in West End.’

      The party crossed the moss-crusted spans of the Melor River bridge while the mare bounced and clattered and shied to a barrage of playful snorts. Masked by the antics of the dun, Asandir added, ‘There are deep antipathies remaining from times past, and much prejudice. Your accents, as you noticed, allied you with unpopular factions. My purpose in asking you to wait in the wood was to spare you from dangerous misunderstanding.’

      Lysaer drew breath to inquire further but the sorcerer forestalled him. ‘Teir’s’Ilessid,’ he said, using an old language term that the prince lacked the knowledge to translate. ‘There are better times for questions and I promise you shall be given all the answers you need. Right now I’m anxious to set distance between the town and ourselves before dark. The drifters are not fools and the folk who saw you will talk. The result might brew up a curiosity far better left to bide until later.’

      Lysaer considered this, his hands twisting and twisting in the chestnut’s silken mane. Less than sure of himself since the loss of his heirship, he regarded the dismal, alien landscape, and tried not to smile as his half-brother battled the flighty, scatter-minded dun through one disobedient rumpus after another.

      The incessant clatter of her footfalls at first overshadowed Dakar’s moans of returned consciousness. These soon progressed to obscenities, also ignored, until a full-throated yowl of outrage brought the company to a precipitous halt.

      A look back showed that the Mad Prophet’s distress was not solely caused by his hangover: tied still to the paint’s saddlebow, Dakar kicked in a red-faced, fish-flop struggle that stemmed from the fact that his cloak had somehow coiled itself around his neck and more peculiarly appeared to be strangling him.

      ‘Iyats,’ Asandir said shortly, but his mouth turned upward in unmistakable amusement. ‘What folk here most aptly name fiends.’

      Dakar swivelled his head and eyes, and with the aggrieved determination of a bound man whose face dangled upside-down, gagged out, ‘You planned this.’

      Possessed by an energy sprite native to Athera, the cloak slithered inexorably tighter around his throat. The fullness of the Mad Prophet’s cheeks deepened from red to purple. ‘Tortures of Sithaer, are you just going to watch while I choke?’

      Asandir urged his black forward and drew rein with ineffable calmness. ‘I’ve warned you time and again to restrain your emotions when dealing with iyats. Your distress just goads them on to greater mischief.’

      Dakar spluttered and gasped through a tightening twist of fabric. ‘That’s fine advice. You aren’t the one under attack.’

      As if his sarcasm sparked suggestion, the cloak very suddenly went limp. The whoop as Dakar sucked in a starved breath quite wickedly transformed into laughter as a puddle peeled itself away from the ground and floated upward, precariously suspended in mid air.

      While Lysaer and Arithon stared in astonishment, Asandir calmly regarded the churning, muddy liquid that threatened to douse his silver head. Without any change in expression he raised his hand, closed his fingers, then lowered his fist to his knee. As if dragged by invisible force, the iyat-borne puddle followed; until the sorcerer snapped his fist open, and the mass lost cohesion and exploded in a spatter of grit-laden droplets.

      Well drenched by the run-off, Dakar uttered a bitten obscenity. ‘That’s unfair,’ he continued on a strained note that stemmed from the fact he was overweight, and sprawled face downward over a saddle that for some while had been galling his belly. ‘You’ve a reputation for quenching fiends and they know it. They don’t go for you in earnest.’

      Asandir raised one eyebrow. ‘You make a fine mark for them. You won’t leash your temper. And they know it.’

      Dakar squirmed and failed to settle his bulk into a more accommodating position. ‘Are you going to cut me free?’

      ‘Are you sober enough to stay mounted?’ The sorcerer fixed impervious, silver-grey eyes on his errant apprentice and shook his head. ‘I think it would be appropriate if you spent the next hour contemplating the result of your untimely binge. I found our two guests at large in the horse fair at West End.’

      Dakar’s eyes widened like a hurt spaniel’s. ‘Damn, but you’re heartless. Can I be blamed because a pair of newcomers can’t follow direct instructions?’

      Asandir gathered the black’s reins. Silent, he slapped the paint’s

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