Fugitive Prince (72 page)

“He’s bones in cold earth, as you will be,” Arithon slashed back. Had he one bodily resource to break Jieret’s hold, he would have risen and fled elsewhere. Trapped helpless, he could only use words for his weapons, and no shield to spare his naked awareness from the lacerating impacts of remembrance. Left unsaid, all the unassuaged hurt of his severance from mage-sight, a brilliance of talent choked off in blood on the banks of Tal Quorin; there existed no weal for its absence.

The Earl of the North was not swayed by pity. “Dania loved you equally well. She would call you impertinent, and say to you now that because of your sacrifice, her bloodline survives. Her four daughters still live unspoiled in my memory. If by Ath’s grace you defeat Desh-thiere in my lifetime, then every one of my family will stand with me in spirit on the hour a Teir’s’Ffalenn accepts his coronation.”

“Let me be dead, first!”
Arithon gasped. “What rightful prince ever murders his feal liegemen?”

The despair, the deep canker of shame stabbed by guilt, at last was laid bare between them. Across misted darkness, Traithe leaned sharply forward. “The moment has come. Jieret, speak now!”

Rathain’s
caithdein
set his jaw. Hardened against heartbreak, he bent and dealt his prince a hard, vengeful shake. In stark force, he said, “Listen to me! Stop crying martyr! Caolle chose not to die of your sword thrust. He got up on his feet and marched back to war

wearing bandages! Nor were the ships lost, or the craftsmen and crews arrested in Riverton. Arithon, he triumphed, despite every obstacle. By his choice and devotion, he gave back your design with only a few torn stitches.
Cariadwin
was even recovered from Corith, and full half of the men from the outpost.”

“This is a dream,” Arithon whispered, the spirit leached from his words, and the fight in him flattened to a whisper.

“No.” Jieret held him, his unvanquished courage enough to cause pain, and his grasp unrelenting with the promise of the bittersweet dichotomy of life. “Everything’s real! If you run now, prince, you’ll never see the fruits you spent yourself penniless to reap.”

Steam billowed. Traithe splashed more water on the rocks, which showed scabrous gray patches from cooling. The stifling darkness spun time into fluidity, while the herb-scented heat rose in waves and eroded all barriers between mind and emotion. Jieret waited. Each breath in his chest flamed new agony. The stillness in the body held clasped in his arms became harrowing, and despair crushed out hope like the immovable wall of a glacier. He understood too well: this was the crux point, the fragility of moment when victory or defeat hung in the balance, awaiting the flick of fate’s finger.

Ever the swordsman, taught to fight for as long as his hand held one weapon, Jieret Red-beard launched his last, stabbing thrust. “Caolle left you a legacy in the form of a Koriani witch’s spelled quartz.”

At Traithe’s start of astonishment, the clan chieftain laughed, broken free like snapped wire from the unmerciful, cranked pressure of strain. “Yes, it’s true.”

Another racked moment; then Arithon’s frame began to shake, first in small jerks, and then in running tremors that caused Jieret a spurt of stark panic. He shoved to his knees, dragging Arithon half-upright. His lungs filled to howl for a loss he had no fiber left in him to withstand.

But Traithe touched him still.

The s’Ffalenn prince was laughing in jagged, hysterical spasms. “A spell crystal?” Arithon ground on through a shrieked, wheezing breath. “Morriel must be spitting like a goosed cat. Whose is it?”

“I’ll tell you,” Jieret promised, stunned stupid by relief. Somehow he found the aplomb to sort language. “But not until you have eaten and rested. You’re so worn right now, the irony would kill you, which was not what Caolle intended.”

Lapsed back into quiet by weakness that skirted the brink of collapse, Arithon turned his head into Jieret’s strong shoulder. “Caolle
was a rabid fox, and you are more devious than that fiend of a father who sired you. I will do as you ask, just to share in the joke. Now you have my word, can we please let in some fresh air?”

But Traithe had already anticipated. Dakar pulled the muffling cloth free from outside, and light streamed in on an inrush of cool breeze that started Jieret shivering. While hands reached to assist, he turned his glad strength to pull Arithon out into daylight. Before they could bundle his spent limbs in the drover’s cloak, his prince drifted into a faint.

“Don’t worry,” Traithe said, his face all wry delight as he peeled the soaked hair from his neck. “He’ll revive fast enough when we douse him clean in the stream. The scout has stew waiting, and sleep without dreams will do much to mend lost resilience.”

“Oh, Ath,” groaned Jieret. He stood up, wobbly at the knees with Arithon’s wrapped weight in his arms. “That’s if we survive the spate of raw language. The one thing this prince hates like fire is being handled like an invalid.”

“Well, that will just provide more incentive.” Traithe’s grin was pure mischief. “If he wants us to stop, he’ll just have to rebuild his strength.”

In fact, Arithon succumbed before they had extracted him from the rock pool. Dried and swathed in the drover’s cloak, he slept without moving throughout the late afternoon. As evening fell, he roused long enough to taste the stewed venison shared out in the bowls Traithe kept at hand for his spellcrafting. Twice, Jieret’s reflexes righted the container that slipped from his liege’s slack fingers. No scalding invective marked either incident. When Arithon slipped off into sleep once again, Traithe scribed a healing glyph over his forehead and snapped for Earl Jieret to stop pacing.

“Worry serves nothing. What we’re seeing is nervous exhaustion.” Like echo, he fielded a sleepy croak from the raven, gone to roost to the night chorus of frogs in the marsh. “I know, little brother, you, too,” he agreed in tart sympathy. Then, to Jieret, who hovered uncertain with his hands whitely clenched to the tang of his broadsword, he added, “Keep watch. If I’m right, your liege will rouse in the darkest hours before dawn. He’ll want to talk, and share the need for understanding companionship.”

Settled to keep watch, while the studded patterns of summer constellations wheeled through the gaps in the oak leaves, Jieret oiled his knife sheaths. He compared stories with the scout, then helped to tie new fletching onto worn arrows. While Dakar dirtied his hands
scraping the deer pelt, Felirin tested his new art of storytelling, until midnight saw all but the Sorcerer settled to rest.

“I haven’t apologized, or thanked you properly for your help,” Jieret said, his hands empty at last and folded against the stained leather of his baldric. “You’ve helped to restore a number of great gifts, among them the heart of my people. Like these scouts of Maenol’s, we could see a harsh future as long as the Alliance keeps building. The headhunter campaigns from Etarra take their toll, but we can face anything, hopeful.”

Traithe lifted his hat and raked back loose hair, the scar at his crown a jagged dark knot that belied his mild stance in the darkness. “The world will spin differently, because of tonight. All things are connected, as Arithon knows, since he was raised to think like a sorcerer. He still tries to honor his grandfather’s teaching. That’s why his failures strike hardest. You did well in your handling. Few could have made him attentive after the sorrows that took place at Riverton.”

“He is as my brother, more than my liege,” Jieret admitted, then blushed for a feeling he had never dared mention.

Traithe arose, tactful, to leave him in privacy for the hour when his prince must stir out of dreams and ask for account of Caolle’s dying. The ending was two-edged, that the stay of victory for Tysan’s clansmen had been won with no chance for a last word exchanged in reconciliation or parting.

Arithon’s branding memory would still be of the sword thrust that had felled the friend who had righted the damage the Koriathain had set in his design.

“He will live with the gifts,” Earl Jieret promised. “Though I swear I’d fret less if I had to bash the wind out of him, making the point stick with my fists.”

The Sorcerer laughed. “You wear Caolle’s stamp alongside of your father’s. He will live on, for all that.” Traithe gathered his satchel and snapped crippled fingers for his raven, which glided down from its roost in the treetops. It alighted, feathers folded like knives as it croaked testy inquiry from the threadbare perch of his shoulder.

“Fare you well, Earl Jieret. Wish your prince my regards.” Then in short, limping steps, the Sorcerer turned away, to be far from Mainmere by morning.

Left alone with his thoughts, Earl Jieret listened, while the night celebrated its chorus of crickets and sheltered the rustles of foraging mice. The forest breathed life. Water and wind braided together in counterpoint. The agile bats swooped like manic shuttles, weaving their unseen strands on the loom of creation. Oddly content that his
fresh loss of Caolle could be shared, he almost missed the first stir of movement as Arithon roused in the drover’s cloak.

The first words came spare with the acerbic, dry wit he remembered. “You’ve got me tied like an infant in swaddling. Damned lucky I don’t have a killing need to piss.”

Jieret settled back against the bole of an oak, his fringed buckskins blurring his angular form in the darkness. “If you did, we’d make wagers on how long you would take to fall sound asleep with your breeks down.”

Arithon snorted. His hands moved, restored to a semblance of dexterity as he freed the tucked cloak and flexed his constricted shoulders. Painfully gaunt, he paused to examine the shirt someone had given to cover his nakedness. “Make sure you say which scout I should thank.”

“You don’t like charity?” Jieret dared a grin behind his raised wrist. “What you wore was scarcely fit for a rag to oil the edge of a weapon.”

Arithon said nothing, the tenor of his quiet like a test.

“The shirt was mine,” Jieret admitted. “Though you could have guessed that by the pitiful fact we had to hack a handspan off the cuffs.”

“And the shoulders fall down to my elbows, I know. Caolle always said I was too slight to bear weapons, and I just broke my pact. I wasn’t going to be first to pick trouble.”

Jieret swallowed.

The crickets filled in as Arithon shifted, then with tenacious effort, pushed his frame upright. Depleted as he was, his spirit was drawn wire. “Never mind the fool etiquette between prince and
caithdein.
As your oathbound brother, I’m sorry. Caolle was the right arm I never deserved. I’m grieved to have taken him from you.”

“He took himself,” Jieret said, truthful, and the difficult words of a sudden came easily as he described the altercation caused by his bull-headed past war captain on the subject of his prince’s protection. “Did you know, he tossed the younger men who volunteered into the river to make his point? The irascible bastard said if they couldn’t best him at wrestling, they weren’t fit to keep guard on the slop in your chamber pot.”

“How like him!” Turned pensive, Arithon also found the question spilled gently, without the barbed lash he had dreaded. “How did he die? You made me a bargain to buy my return, and by Ath, you’ll need to deliver.”

Under the kindly mantle of summer foliage, Jieret shared the tears and the triumphs that had won back the launched vessels from Riverton.

“So whose spell crystal have I inherited as my legacy?” Arithon asked at due length.

“You couldn’t guess?” Earl Jieret reached into the loosened breast of his jerkin and tugged a fine silver chain over his riot of red hair. “Caolle never did things by the half measure. He’s left you his last power of revenge upon First Senior Lirenda.”

Arithon choked, hands pressed to his lips, while his shoulders spasmed with dammed-back delight and wild laughter. “Oh, Dharkaron’s sweet Spear! That’s too rich.” He extended a thin arm and accepted the gift. Caught starlight in the crystalline facets flashed like the forerunning bolt of a tempest. His remonstrance held humor as he closed his marked fist, silver links snagged like a looped strand of tinsel between his irreverent fingers. “You know such an object should be veiled in silk?”

“So ask a townsman,” Jieret said, piqued. “If the bitch finds her nerves pricked, that’s her just deserts for trying to play us like string puppets.”

But if Arithon shared the release in snide humor, his grave countenance showed no breaking sign. He seemed queerly grieved, head tilted a listening angle to one side, while the chain magnified the running fit of trembling that had reft the peace from his hands. “Is my lyranthe nearby?”

Jieret straightened, astounded by his urgency. “She’s safe with the saddle packs. Why?”

Moved by Arithon’s sudden, sweet smile of relief, he arose without question and fetched the priceless, wrapped bundle that had almost been lost in the disastrous flight out of Riverton. When the fine instrument was restored to the hands of the bard, Arithon laid the quartz crystal at his feet. He caressed the carved wood, musician to his core, and rapt with the call of his muse as he struck and fine-tuned each neglected, silver-wound string.

Then he launched into a haunting, free melody.

The cadence and the harmonies were like nothing before, speaking in lyric of sorrow and joy caught enraptured in a fired, double helix. Earl Jieret wept. The notes spilled and soared, each one an exquisite needle of inflection too fine to endure, and each measure an unfettered, tingling ecstasy bridged over desolate emptiness.

In the gloom of the trees, the scout stirred and gasped. Felirin awoke, raised his head, and crumpled, his maimed hands clasped to still the demand of a mourning he could not bear to release lest he damage the sheer majesty of the spell.

Of the thralled listeners embraced by the Masterbard’s talent that
night, only Dakar the Mad Prophet came to suspect the melody was not wrought for Caolle; nor yet for the tragedy of a free singer’s burned hands; nor even to commemorate the survival of a most severe trial of s’Ffalenn conscience. The phrasing, stamped into empathic clarity, was Arithon’s tuned response to the cry of a solitary spirit imprisoned in the lattice of a Koriani spell crystal.