The Ships of Merior

‘Havish’s, under High King Eldir, would be wise to.’ Maenalle shut her eyes, her fist with the letter bunched hard at her temple, and her free hand nerveless on the tabletop.

Unless and until the Fellowship sorcerers unriddled a way to break the blood feud engendered by Desh-thiere’s revenge, the perils were too dire to deny.

These men at her table had seen the forefront of the war unleashed between the cursed princes. Even heard at second hand, the ruthless scale of the conflict was enough to bring cold sweats. When Prince Lysaer had raised the Etarran garrison to cut down Rathain’s royal heir, one battle had seen two thirds of Deshir’s clansmen fight to the death, despite the unstinting protections of sorcery and shadows lent by the liege lord they defended. Losses to the attackers had been more devastating. Fears of further retaliation by magecraft had drawn Lysaer to stay on in Rathain to unite its merchant guilds and quarrelsome, independent city governments. Against the rifts of old politics, he had seen stunning success. Every summer, headhunters rode out in greater force to hunt down and slaughter clan fugitives in their search for the Master of Shadow.

For centuries, townsmen had killed clansmen on sight; the stakes now were never more dangerous. The beguiling inspiration of the Prince of the West lent city mayors powerful impetus to pool resources and systematically exterminate enemies already driven deep into hiding.

Having met Lysaer s’Ilessid only briefly, Maenalle still sighed in regret for a gifted statesman’s skills twisted awry by Desh-thiere’s curse. Through the course of just one past visit, her most reticent scouts had warmed to their prince enough to sorrow rather than rage over his treacherous alliance with town enemies. As for Arithon of Rathain, he was mage-trained: secretive, powerfully clever, and too fiendishly innovative to crumple before whatever odds Lysaer would raise against him.

‘Where is your liege?’ Maenalle asked. ‘Does Arithon know his adversary now looks to claim ancestral lands in Tysan?’

Because her eyes were averted, only Tashan saw the exasperated look that flashed between the earl and his war captain. To Jieret’s staunch credit, he found courage to answer her directly. ‘We came to give warning. Of Arithon’s intent, we’ve no clue. When he left us, he made his will plain. He would not have his presence become a target to encourage the geas that drives him and Lysaer to war.’

Still bluntly irked over a clash of wills fully five years gone, Caolle knotted ham fists on the trestle top. ‘We haven’t seen or heard from our liege since the rite sung over our war dead. Ath knows where he is. His Grace himself won’t deign to send word.’

Which explained the hardness behind Jieret’s focused maturity, Maenalle concluded in silent pain. To him alone had fallen the task of guarding his people from Etarra’s seasonal purge by headhunters. The woman in her ached for her grandson, who might come to taste the same griefs.

If Lysaer won title to Avenor, the rift engendered by Desh-thiere’s ills, that had sundered Rathain and sparked old hates to furious bloodshed, must inevitably sweep into Tysan.

‘Our clans will prepare for the worst,’ Maenalle concluded in bitterness. She arose, let the wrung parchment fall on the tabletop, then offered the beleaguered young earl the courtesy due to an equal, for whether he had gained the privilege of swearing fealty to a lawfully sanctioned prince, like her, he was caithdein to a realm without a king. His liege lord did not back him; by himself, Jieret had shouldered the risk, had left Rathain’s shores with the fourteen companions who were his last surviving peers to bring word of Lysaer’s false intent.

For all her sixty years, Maenalle felt tired and disheartened; beaten down with sorrow enough to contemplate what this red-bearded stripling would not, even for grief since the slaughter of his family: break down and give way to hatred, abandon himself to vindictive killing.

‘You don’t resent your prince for going,’ she found herself saying in unabashed awe. Tashan turned around to stare at her, while Caolle looked on, nonplussed.

Their reactions passed unheeded as Jieret gave her the first true smile she had seen. ‘I admire Arithon, much as my father did, though my line’s gift of Sight warned us both that my family would die in royal service.’

‘I met your liege once,’ Maenalle admitted. ‘Though I never saw him work shadows or magecraft, Ath grant me grace, I wish never to cross wits with him again.’

Rueful in grim understanding, Jieret said, ‘Never mind Ath. If my liege has his way, you probably won’t. I believe he finds contentment in obscurity.’

Neither cynical Caolle nor Tysan’s lady steward wasted breath to belabour the obvious: that Prince Lysaer’s public presence and insidious charisma must eventually come to prevail. Arithon of Rathain would awaken one day, else be battered from his complaisance.

Grant

Talith, sister to Etarra’s Lord Commander of the Guard, could recall when early autumn had filled the city with the smell of ripe apples. Hauled in on the farm-wains that toiled up the winding roads through the passes, the fruit had been unloaded in piles on burlap in the raucous expanse of the markets. In imitation of the pranks of older gallants, bored, rich young boys once delighted in upsetting the stacks to the detriment of passing traffic. Birds squabbled over the cidery crush milled under by the cartwheels, and winds whisked their burden of scraping, flying leaves, sharpened by frost off the peaks.

But if the sunlight restored since the Mistwraith’s captivity had increased the orchards’ bounty, Etarra held widespread change.

Spurred to fears of attack by shadows and sorcery, and through promise to aid armed resource with the powers over light that alone could protect and counterward, the brilliant statesmanship of one man had annealed strained politics into alliance. Due to Lysaer s’Ilessid’s dedication, the disparate city governments inside Rathain’s borders now stood united in common cause. The miracle of their accord brought unprecedented co-operation. Against the barbarian clans who had harboured the fugitive Master of Shadow, every garrison in the north levied troops to support Etarra’s campaign.

Apples were now stacked in barrels to discourage pilfering, and the season’s turn jammed streets built wide enough to accommodate the heaviest caravans with shipments of provisions and arms for the bursars. Arranged like a hub in the Mathom Pass, the wealthiest trade centre on the continent spent its treasury to house and maintain a war camp through the winter. The hay-fields nearest to the walls sprouted a muddy, trampled maze of officer’s shacks, supply tents and barracks, each block marked off like street signs by standards with sun-faded banners. Grown yearly more familiar, the taint of coal from the armourers’-fires wrapped the rooftops in haze that deepened with dusk to blue mist.

Lady Talith disdained to share in the commotion of the returning army. She disliked loud-voiced men and salons packed with women nervously desperate for news. That the royal-born-sorcerer Etarra’s new field host was intended to annihilate had so far refused to reappear did nothing to blunt the unease in the streets: his spells and his shadows had bought seven thousand deaths five years past in Deshir. The grief and the terror remained, never to be forgotten. The garrison that endured sustained its festered rage by bloodying what remained of Arithon’s allies, clan barbarians systematically pursued and ferreted out of the wilds. For deeply personal reasons, Talith hated the boastful stories of ambush and campaign, the reminiscences of past seasons. And so she disdained the invitations and the crush, and stood with her chin pillowed on furred cuffs to gaze over the square brick embrasure that faced the mountains.

When the troops first marched in, she had heard what mattered from Diegan: the crack divisions deployed into Halwythwood’s deep glens had returned with markedly poor success. No barbarian camps at all had been found to be put to the sword.

Again, the brigands under Caolle and Jieret Red-beard had made sport of the headhunters’ efforts. Except for one isolated incident, their bands of clan scouts had escaped, despite repeated complaints of raiding and couriers brazenly killed or waylaid as near as the Mathorn road.

Lysaer s’Ilessid had warned that the barbarians would organize; that Arithon’s ongoing disappearance presaged more devious plans. Having met the Master of Shadow just once, Talith shared his unrest.

A light voice cut across her thoughts. ‘I thought I should find you here.’

The postern door had opened silently and the step that approached was dancer-light. Talith did not turn, though the hair pinned in coils by her gold-wired pearls trapped heat at the base of her neck. Haughtily still in her wrappings of tawny velvet, lined by the flicker of the lamplighter’s torch as he shuffled on his eventide route down the wall, she loosed an invisible sigh.

The man most sought after and admired in all the rich halls of Etarra, Lysaer s’Ilessid, called Prince of the West and saviour of the city, perched with poised grace at her elbow. A pause developed as he examined her; a man would be dead, not to suck a rushed breath for her beauty.

Torchlight caught his sapphires like splintered ice as he added, ‘At long last, I’ve had word.’

Talith raked her teeth over her lower lip to redden and brighten her pout. ‘You’ve located your bane? The Master of Shadow has been found?’

His stark and stubborn silence informed her that he had not.

From behind, glass chinked as the arthritic old servant fumbled to unlatch the postern lamp’s cover. Lysaer pushed off the crenellation, gave a casual flick of his hand. A spark jumped from his finger across empty air and snapped the wick into flame behind the smudged panes.

The lampsman gave a violent start and spun around. Made aware of just who stood with the lady, he gulped in pale awe and knelt. ‘Your royal Grace.’

‘Ath bless, you need not bow.’ Lysaer gave the man a grin and a silent, conspirator’s gesture to hurry along on his rounds. Never one to flaunt his gifted powers, this night, the prince was jealous of his privacy.

‘Ah,’ sighed the lampsman, recovering. He returned a wink and hurried off, trailing the oily reek of torch smoke around the bend by the gatehouse. Inside the ward room, a guard lost his dice throw and cursed, his epithets obscured as a wagon rumbled down the thoroughfare below.

Persistent despite interruptions, Talith said, ‘What word could move you but the wish of your heart, to find out where Arithon’s hiding? Ath knows, you’ve searched every cranny in Rathain.’

The prince who had helped wrest the sun clear of mist was never an easy man to nettle. ‘If I’d unmasked that sorcerer’s whereabouts, beloved, your brother’s troops would be marching, winter ice or not.’ Unlike the fashion of the dandies, Lysaer wore no scent. He required none. The closeness of him seemed to burn Talith through to the skin. She needed to shed the clinging weight of her mantle, but dared not.

He touched her arm and gently turned her. Even after five years, the beauty of him stole her breath. The flare of new lantern light fired his gold hair, gilded perfect cheekbones and sculpted chin and a bearing instinctively royal. As earnestly as the city gallants strove to emulate such carriage, inherent majesty eluded them. Then, forthright as no man born Etarran would ever be, the prince cupped her face and kissed her.

Passion flurried and tangled Talith’s thinking.

He was excited by something. His hands trembled and his eyes drank in the sight of her with scarcely veiled anticipation.

Piqued enough by his secrecy to use looks that could bring men to their knees, Talith drew back and struck him lightly on the jewelled sleeve of his doublet. ‘What have you learned?’

Lysaer laughed, a flash of perfect teeth. ‘The best news. Never mind the Master and his shadows.’ Eagerness let him speak of his nemesis without his usual brooding frown. ‘The Mayor of Korias has finally set seal to my claim. Avenor and its lands are to be mine.’ He caught her waist and spun her, while around them, the flutter of night insects battered hot glass in their fatal, blind swoop to the light. ‘We can officially formalize our engagement. That’s if you can find heart to marry a prince who has title, but no subjects, and fields gone to briar and wilderness.’

Talith looked into deep sapphire eyes and shivered. ‘Everywhere you go you have subjects,’ she said. ‘Not least that decrepit old lampblack. He’ll brag to his grandchildren until he dies, for your tricks. Never say it was I who insisted on meaningless propriety.’

He reached, brushed back the loose curl at her temple, then began with abandon to pluck out jewelled pins. Neither of them noticed the dicers’ revealing silence in the gate house as a cataract of wheat-gold hair unreeled over his ringed knuckles. Lysaer touched her brow with his lips. ‘I could accept no estate as a gift from Lord Diegan.’ His mouth trailed down her cheek, caressing. ‘Not when I’m the one laying claim to his sole, magnificent sister.’ He reached the left corner of her mouth. As her lips parted to receive him, he held back for one last rejoinder. ‘I shall plunder this city, nonetheless. The jewel of Avenor’s restoration shall be your hand. My word as prince, your beauty and your children will become the crown treasures of Tysan, and the ones most munificently cherished.’

At long last he tasted her fully.

Down the battlement, the wide-eyed watch clapped and raised rough cheers. Lysaer inclined his head their way in courtly salute, then turned his shoulder and rearranged tawny velvet to shield the face of his beloved from their charring.

Talith melted into his embrace, every nerve in her stretched to match the bent of his desire. She could wish her heart was not cruelly held captive; she could ache with the hard female knowledge this marriage to come must eventually consume and destroy her. Like the moths, she could not steer away and save herself from the blinding.

The man in her arms was too much for her. Foremost a prince, he was the selfless instrument of others dependent on his protection. His daunting gifts already bound him to commitments far stronger than love. The hands that tenderly cradled her, that had casually sparked flame to a recalcitrant lamp, could as easily raise power with the virulence of summer lightning. Against the deceit of Arithon s’Ffalenn, and the scars of a city that had survived a war fuelled with the selfsame shadows that had beaten back the Mistwraith, this man’s defence had been dedicated.

Exalted and imprisoned by shameless happiness, Lady Talith blinked back rising tears. What was Avenor to become, if rebuilt, but a broader base of support for wider campaigns and more armies? She understood with a rage that drove her to hate the more fiercely. Lysaer s’Ilessid would never have peace. Nor would he become fully hers until the day the Master of Shadow was found and run down, to be finally, safely put to death.