LITMIR.BIZ

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the instant it was noticed as he stepped back and away and closed the door.

      Elaira sat for lack of the nerve to do otherwise. Feeling nakedly foolish, she buried unease in a study of her surroundings. The room was crowded with shelves, a work-place that smelled of herbs, and waxed wood and oiled wool; a basket of carded fleece sat in one corner, beside the worn frame of a spinning wheel. The woven rug underfoot had faded with age to a muddle of earth tones and greys, and the walls were piled high with crates of yarn and old junk.

      ‘What brought you here, lady?’ the sorcerer asked again. He bent with a servant’s unobtrusiveness and began to build up the fire. Flame brightened as the birch logs caught and lined his hard profile in light.

      Elaira stared down at her boots and the muddied hem of her skirts which now gave off faint curls of steam. All the excuses, every elaborate and reasonable-sounding word she had rehearsed through the afternoon fled in the rush of her fast-beating heart. She was out of her depth. She knew it; before she could think, she spoke honestly. ‘I was curious.’

      Asandir straightened up. Stern, but not unkindly, he looked at her, from her splashed skirts to her open, angular face. His eyes were penetrating, yet utterly without shadow. The awful strength behind his presence spoke of purpose rather than force. He reached out, hooked a stool from beneath the spindle and sat with his back to the lintel by the grate. Then, hands folded on his knees, he waited.

      A hot rush of blood touched Elaira’s cheeks. With utmost tact and patience, he expected her to compose herself and qualify on her own. Oddly released from her awe, she unlaced shaking fingers. She slipped the violet cloak of her order over the chairback and tried to assimilate the particular that, unlike a Koriani senior, this sorcerer would pass no judgement upon her; no debt would be set on her demands.

      She gathered her nerve and blurted, ‘I wanted to see, to know. If the Prophecy of West Gate was filled, and whether Desh-thiere’s Bane has come at last to Athera.’

      Asandir regarded her, unblinking. ‘You passed its substance on the way in.’

      He would elaborate nothing unless she pressed him. Her betters insisted as much, endlessly: Fellowship sorcerers gave up nothing freely. Eager to test that platitude for herself, Elaira dared a question. ‘I observed that the Teir’s’Ffalenn has been initiated to the disciplines of power. Is this what gives him ability to dominate the Mistwraith?’

      Asandir straightened, sharpened to sudden attention. ‘That took both initiative and courage, neither one a praiseworthy attribute in the entrenched opinion of your sisterhood.’ He smiled in gentle humour. ‘I intend to give you answer, Elaira, but in the expectation you will treat the information with a foresight your superiors might hold in contempt.’

      Elaira suppressed astonishment, that a Fellowship sorcerer in his multiple depths of power might share frustration with her colleagues’ preoccupation with the present.

      But her interest was cut short as Asandir said, ‘In the times of the rebellion, when four of the high kings’ heirs were sent to safety through West Gate, the Fellowship granted foundational training to the Teir’s’Ahelas to increase her line’s chances of survival. Her descendants on Dascen Elur continued her tradition but forgot certain of the guidelines. In the course of five centuries of isolation, the mages there achieved what the Seven could not.’

      ‘Is that possible?’ Elaira interjected.

      Asandir’s silvered brows tipped up. ‘What is possible does not always coincide with what is wise.’

      Instantly Elaira felt stupid.

      And yet, perversely, instead of rebuke for her thoughtless words, Asandir chose to explain the bride-gift which granted two men an inborn command of elemental mastery. ‘Together, our princes can vanquish Desh-thiere. Separately, you must know, their gifts might potentially inflict greater harm than the wraith their powers must defeat.’

      Arrogance did not admit fallibility and reticence did not offer explanation; about the Fellowship, the Koriani Senior Circle was emphatically mistaken. Just accorded the insight of a colleague or an equal, Elaira sat stunned and still.

      ‘You have noticed in the Teir’s’Ffalenn a familiarity with the inner disciplines,’ Asandir continued, his eyes turned down toward his hands. ‘He spent his boyhood with the s’Ahelas mages, and their teaching was not wasted on him. One can hope that the sensitivity inherent in his lineage will keep his eyes opened to responsibility. In that, he will have all the support the Fellowship can offer.’

      Floundering through a quicksand of overturned beliefs, Elaira said, ‘Then the success of Dakar’s prophecy is not assured?’

      ‘Could it be? Men created Desh-thiere. The hands of men must bring it down. Exchanges of power on that scale are never bought without peril. Athera must endure the price. And your question has been answered now, I think.’

      In response to his note of finality, Elaira rose from her chair. She gathered her violet cloak, her normally impertinent nature repressed behind a frown.

      As if attuned to her thoughts about him, Asandir said, ‘Your order has ever been dedicated to intolerance.’

      Elaira steeled herself and looked up into those terrifying, unruffled eyes. ‘My seniors hate to admit to incompetence.’

      ‘Lesser strength does not add up to uselessness.’ The sorcerer crossed the room.

      The enchantress followed, reluctant. ‘Our First Enchantress to the Prime, Lirenda, would disagree.’

      Asandir regarded her as he lifted the doorlatch. ‘But you are different.’

      He warned her. Elaira understood as much as he guided her through the door with the same feather-touch that had admitted her; as if his hands innately knew their capacity to unleash cataclysm, and in wariness adhered to gentle opposite. She would do well to apply the same principle and curb her outspoken brashness.

      ‘You have a clear eye for truth,’ the sorcerer said. ‘Don’t replace one mistaken set of principles for others as narrow-minded.’

      Elaira quailed before the thought that Asandir had credited her with far too balanced a mind. She was not impartial where her seniors were concerned; and yet that seemed what this sorcerer expected her to become. She crossed the outer room, where the chess board had been set to rights and two chairs now stood empty. The seer Enithen Tuer sat in her rocker, blinking clouded eyes through the smoke of an aromatic pipe. If the crone saw past a dark and tangled future, she offered no advice as the younger enchantress gathered up her shepherd’s cloak and quietly let herself out.

      Night had fallen, dense in the absence of any lamps. Elaira’s progress down on the moss-caked stair became careful and slow with uncertainty. She had taken on more than she bargained for. As she applied the nuances of her training to analyse the interview in retrospect, she realized how easily Asandir had tuned her expectations, lulled her sense of caution with a touch of human fragility and an air of attentive solicitude. Now, aware in the chill of the alley how subtly she had been pushed to think beyond her limits, the enchantress shivered outright. The sorcerer had not used her. But he could have, deftly as a potter turning unformed clay on a wheel.

      The Prime Circle’s obstinate fears were not in the least bit unfounded.

      Elaira roused herself, mechanically continued until she reached the base of the stair. Asandir had warned of consequences. Through queasy, unsettled nerves, the enchantress who had dared the unthinkable sorted out the single thread that mattered. A Fellowship sorcerer had trusted her. Why remained a mystery, but were she to reveal what she had learned – that the Mistwraith’s bane rested solely in the hands of two men bred to rule, and that the Fellowship itself could not directly limit the result – the Koriani Prime Circle would be roused to bitterest anger, or worse, outright obstruction.

      Elaira kicked a loose piece of slate; her boots sloshed through puddles with only minimal awareness of the wet. She could not escape a reprimand; if under questioning by her seniors she were to conceal that her

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