Fugitive Prince (69 page)

“What’s wrong?” asked the courier, made the isolate center of attention by the revealing firelight. “The brig is unmanned, for common sense. Storm could snap her cables any time and set her down on the rocks. No crew could save her. She’d break up in minutes. Riptide’s too fierce the way the swell’s running to allow a stranded company to launch off boats if she wrecked.”

Across the weather-stained vaults of the cave, over the heads of men-at-arms and Alliance officers, Lirenda saw Lysaer glance her way. His eyes were hard blue, and scarcely amused: the cliff-top vantage of his audience with her, and the summary act of his judgment
had not yet been shared with his people. None of them knew that men loyal to Arithon had been left at large in the storm. Since the longboats which accomplished furtive escape could not have been seen from the shoreline, she alone shared the clandestine awareness that Arithon’s crew from the
Lance
had more than likely survived.

Those men could not be traced now. The ferocity of the gale would have covered their tracks, even if a boat could venture the crossing to the islet where they had sought refuge.

“Your fleet admiral said risk no lives for the prize,” the courier answered in earnest response to the sudden outburst of questions. “If a watch crew stayed aboard, what good could that do? They’d be left to fate’s mercy. The brig can scarcely beat her way out. Wind’s like a funnel at the eastern inlet. To the west lie the Snags, submerged reefs and rocks fit to mill a hull’s timbers to wreckage.”

Lirenda arose. Having breached Lysaer’s trust, she felt moved to offer a gesture to salvage what she could of her order’s damaged integrity. She gathered her damp mantle and stepped through the grouped men, while hands snatched their strewn dice up out of her path, or made signs against spellcraft at her back. She paid the inimical gestures no mind. The smells of moist cloth and oiled steel and humanity oppressed her as the mass of the company quieted. All eyes fixed her way. Her wet kid shoes made less sound than a wraith as she traversed the sweating limestone floor to reach the fireside enclave with the prince.

“Loan me one of your diamonds,” she said.

Lysaer asked no question, but drew his knife and cut a stud from his doublet. His hands retained their enviable poise as he placed the gem into her keeping.

Lirenda knelt before the fire. She pushed back the lush, sable fall of her hair. The beat of close flame dewed a sheen on her forehead as she turned the small jewel between her fingers. She rotated the chased setting and measured the illumination which played through the starred planes of its facets, until an arrow of frozen light threw its focused reflection across the centerline of her palm. The stone’s imprint was not dedicated to her; she could exert no will through its matrix. But given the sensitivity of her inborn talent, and guided by knowledge of runelore, she might link the stone’s resonance into Lysaer’s need to know, and shape a rudimentary scrying.

The enchantress closed out the furtive rustles as the curious gathered at her back. Her mind brooked no distraction. She unreeled her awareness deep into the stone’s core until she captured the still point at its heart. Then she raised her distanced vision across the fire’s emission
of rippling smoke and hot sparks. She narrowed her eyesight upon the planes of Prince Lysaer’s face, that no nuance of expression should escape her.

“Stare through the flames and gaze deep into the matrix of the diamond,” she instructed. “Hold to your wish. Let your thoughts not stray from your purpose. While you own your desire to its fullest extent, I’ll scribe an amplifying rune-field. If your will stays steadfast and fortune favors, the answer you seek will become manifest in the fire.”

As Prince Lysaer concentrated, Lirenda stretched and extended her awareness. The distraction of the fighting company dissolved as relaxation stilled her outer senses. Preternaturally conscious of the grounding quiet rooted throughout the cavern, she embraced the weighty tonnage of the earth, then expanded her consciousness beyond. The gale outside touched her nerves as a tantrum of wind and element. She felt the white waves which drummed through Corith’s headland, and the vibration of thunder through bedrock. This place, which had been the past lair of great drakes, made her effort feel sadly diminished. She fought the sudden, overwhelming futility, that her order’s works seemed little more than the industry of ants, which died to raise cities from sand grains.

Through the muffling calm of her inner alignment, she heard Lysaer’s word of dismissal. Changed air brushed her skin. She sensed the dispersal of men from the fireside, and wondered what secret the Prince of the Light wished to keep from his ranking officers. Then her last thought dissolved into full trance. Held in suspension between prince and diamond, she raised her hand and scribed the opening cipher for the first ordained rune of power…

The bright scrim of the flames gave way to combed sheets of rain, and another live fire, quenched in a darkness measured between the static bursts of new lightning. The scrying lent vision where the storm reigned supreme, and the waters of a rock-bounded estuary lay thrashed to boiling lead by the brunt of the whipping winds. The snubbed hull of a brig loomed in faint silhouette through the veiling rags of spindrift. The
Cariadwin
had been secured by competent seamen, her spars and topmasts struck for foul weather, with spring lines made fast and a double length of cable payed out for added security. Storm made a mockery of even the most stringent precautions. The brig tossed and slammed like a maddened beast. The sheltering influence from the islet to windward afforded her scanty protection. Behind the roll of her counter, the peril of a lee shore: a spit of raw boulders sieved through by ribbons of green water and spume. Jagged reefs gnashed the froth in the shallows, seething up geysers of spray.

Despite the fury of wind and wave, the brig’s decks held men, struggling against the murderous elements to hoist her topsail yards to her caps. In determined struggle, sails were bent on, with spunyard stops, and gaskets cast off, to ready her canvas for setting on instantaneous notice. The spellcaught vantage sharpened into focus and revealed their desperation: the slipped hand or foot as gusts raked the ratlines; the cried orders lost or not heard at all as rain and waves drummed white torrents on her decks. And yet, even blind, even deafened by the gale’s thundering tumult, the men worked in concert. They cajoled the ship like a reluctant maiden. First foresails and main yard were hauled aback; then the silvered stroke of an axe blade chopped her anchor line at the hawse.

The wind claimed her then for its own.

A bone in the teeth of a maelstrom, the
Cariadwin
spun, slewed abeam as her foresail was cut free. She heeled under her flogging yards of canvas. Then more sails bloomed from mizzen and spanker gaff. To the peal of someone’s exuberant whoop, she backed, stern to. Another unheard, frantic order sent crewmen scurrying to haul the braces. The helm was reversed. Stressed sails slammed full, laid for a starboard tack.

“Saved!” cried her distant, gamecock captain in a paean of exultation. Through a brash feat of daring in defiance of all odds, the brig recovered in Prince Arithon’s name skirted the foaming fangs of the reef and ran the open channel, to be lost into howling dark.

“Show me the cove where my galleys are snugged down,” Lysaer broke in with hard urgency. But cold logic scarcely required a scrying to confirm the extent of the enemy’s resourceful sabotage. The
Lance’s
crew had included forty war-hardened clansmen set free by King Eldir’s justice. They had predictably matched a choice opportunity with thorough tactics. Nor had they shown any mercy in vengeance for the kinsmen they found enslaved with the royal fleet. In shadowy images, the bad news emerged: of hulls left holed and unfit for passage, and a score of dead sentries, dropped at their posts with slashed throats. All that remained of the two hundred clan convicts Lysaer’s justice had chained for the oar were the sheared-off ends of their fetters.

“A victory for your nemesis,” Lirenda observed. Her laughter welled up for the lofty irony, that Lysaer’s self-righteous public scruples had led to his own comeuppance.

“For today, one might think so.” The prince’s response was too calm, too knowing, and his gesture, a courtier’s indifference as he extended his hand to recover his borrowed diamond. “The sweetest gains fall from the jaws of defeat. What seasoned galleyman could
possibly believe that brig could sail clear in the teeth of a gale, except through an act of dark sorcery?”

He let that sink in, while a crook of one finger brought a page out of nowhere to secure the loose stud in his baggage. The boy blushed under his blinding smile, then retired out of earshot as the exhilarating impact of Lysaer’s attention fastened back on the enchantress. “Our departure from Min Pierens will be delayed for some weeks. Since no message can be sent until my damaged galleys are made seaworthy, my council ashore will be tied. If Maenol’s rescued clansmen strike to plunder before then, affairs back in Tysan will be primed and set for a righteous retaliation. My deferred reappearance will repay every setback. I’ll find public fervor whipped to a fever pitch the instant we make landfall on the mainland.”

Lirenda stared, while the stopped air in her chest compressed into stunned disbelief. “Ath’s mercy, you could not have intended this!”

“I will prevail, for the good of this land and the innocent people who rely on my protection.” Across the dwindling rags of the fire, Lysaer s’Ilessid resumed in a flawless and chilling sincerity. “None would have been more surprised than I to see this small venture succeed. After the slaughter at Dier Kenton Vale, what fool could presume the Shadow Master’s capture could occur without hardship and sacrifice? My inner council at Avenor is scarcely naive. Each man was selected to outlast small defeats. Between the warning your Prime dispatched to Etarra and today’s predictable setback, I have gained my sure proof to expose wider truth. Mankind’s endangerment does not spring from the Spinner of Darkness alone. The pitfalls of spellcraft pose an equal threat to society.”

Lirenda’s appalled comprehension came magnified by the telltale rustle of her mantle.

Lysaer granted her unease a statesman’s smile, laced with dangerous irony: reversal of his high-handed strategy
was in fact no setback at all.
His dedicated quest to bring the Shadow Master’s downfall had been expanded to eradicate the practice of great and lesser sorcery; for that cause, he would let conflict widen and foment. In due course, his call to arms could extend his control across the entire continent.

“You begin to understand,” Lysaer said, satisfied. “Davien the Betrayer’s fountain in the Red Desert has expanded the game board across the next five centuries. Time enough to usher in sweeping change. As the guilds suffer predation from s’Ffalenn ships and renegade crews, I’ll gain for Avenor and my Alliance the omnipotent support to raise standing armies across the continent. My crowning strike must be withheld until I have won the sworn loyalty of every city in
Athera. Then I shall bring down the s’Ffalenn bastard, and with him, the Fellowship of Seven, and
any other factions in the land who obstruct the growth of human destiny.”

Lysaer arose, the majesty he carried like an extension of his flesh made no less by a setting of uncivilized rock. “Now my warning to your Prime is explicitly clear.” His pearls and his diamonds snagged baleful lights from the coals as he stopped, and faced her, and gave his dismissive conclusion. “Be sure she hears the extent of my disappointment for her false principles.”

While the embittered calculation of Lysaer’s long-range purpose swept her damp skin into chills, Lirenda felt his eyes on her, fierce and wholly dedicated. She now had the measure of him; could sense the trapped depths. His pose of self-honesty shielded some deep and unconsoled anguish. “What will you tell your men of the sacrifice you will demand of them?”

The smoldering spark of his righteous rage struck through his quick laugh like a barb. “Should I not use the same lie you thought to foist upon me for your order’s covert conspiracy? Are we not alike, lady? Both capable of committing errors of mercy for men whose criminal acts lie outside the constraints of human decency.”

But they were not alike, First Senior Lirenda sensed in hard-core certainty;
not yet.
She had ordered Caolle’s survival out of hatred, with precise intent to ruin the man whose character might ensnare her through unbidden emotion of the heart; for no living being would she endure the blind agony Prince Lysaer s’llessid suffered in secret for the love he had rejected in Princess Talith. Nor did she seek the accession of prime power for the purpose of public crusade.

Lirenda seized on the opening she had gleaned to inflict the last stinging word. “On the day you command your princess’s death, your royal Grace, I invite you to present the same question again.” Then she gathered the spoiled folds of her mantle and removed herself from the grace of Lysaer’s presence.