Fugitive Prince (78 page)

The Prime’s sharpness fell like storm-cracked wood. “I may not walk, but I’ve not lost my faculties! No. The girl stays. The matter at hand concerns her most closely.”

Emphatic enough warning, Lirenda understood. Morriel would not keep an untried initiate at hand, except as a successor in training. Lirenda needed to sit, but that comfort was denied her. Minutes passed, while her knees shook, and the peeress vented her vengeful, small cruelty by spending a maliciously long interval to smooth her mussed clothing and remove the half-wit from the chamber.

The final clank as the page boy reset the bar saved Lirenda from involuntary collapse. Now, when shaken nerves left her weakened, the Prime Matriarch pressed ahead with a scalpel’s dispassion.

“You have claimed your right to autonomous responsibility. That is well.” Eyes dark as death stayed pinned straight ahead. The bleachedpaper finger of one hand stirred to point. “Had you not spoken, madam, your worth to me would have become less than nothing. At the ninth hour, you’ve dared the initiative to claim your mistake. For that, you have won small reprieve. I wait to be shown whether you can satisfy the balance and master the means to redeem yourself.”

Lirenda swallowed. Through firsthand, hardened experience she sensed that no forward step would be easy. Morriel Prime would not volunteer her any grace of kindly assistance. Whatever petition the stakes would allow, the deposed First Senior understood she must assemble her case for herself. All the steel in her character was scarcely sufficient to let her ignore the puppyish, staring young girl. Battling a wildfire surge of resentment, she treated with the Prime as if the ongoing audience had been offered in perfect privacy.

“I let personal feelings interfere with clear judgment.” Admission was painful. The darkness, the candles, the inimical bite of the Skyron crystal’s aura abraded her cornered resolve to survive and reclaim her lost grace. “Give me trial by recompense. I would atone for the imperfections in my character, and see your trust in my competence restored.”

Morriel’s hooded stare pinned with a vulture’s intensity. “Trust in your competence is the least of the issue. Your lapse will bring damaging consequences. In cold fact, the ramifications could prove more dire than you possibly imagine.”

Lirenda ventured nothing.

“Oh yes,” Morriel went on. Her stilled, folded fingers stirred to insectile life and fussed at a fold in the coverlet. “What you name a
mistake
may well cost the Koriani Order its unbroken thread of continuance.”

“I can’t see how,” Lirenda burst out, unable to mask disbelief. “Arithon s’Ffalenn by himself could scarcely threaten the might of the entire sisterhood.”

“You think not?” Morriel glared back, inimical. “He is the world’s cipher to checkrein the Fellowship. We need him for that. Without him, we risk my succession itself. I have scried proof. Left at liberty, the course of the Shadow Master’s destiny holds full potential to destroy us.”

“I couldn’t know!” Lirenda cried, crumbled in devastation. “My misjudgment back at Riverton stemmed from Caolle’s life, and he was no more than the prince’s sworn liegeman.”

“Damage resulted.” A hooded cobra nestled in bed linens, the Matriarch spat words in contempt. “You will have heard that my lower limbs are paralyzed. I cannot set another web of grand conjury from the confines of a sedan chair! At this time, active use of the Great Waystone presents too strenuous an ordeal. I must have complete rest to recover my strength just to pass on the secret of its mastery!”

No need for a tedious review of the obvious; Lirenda knew well enough. Without the Great Waystone, the full transfer of prime power could never be passed on intact.

Morriel resumed on the rags of a stertorous rage. “Since my vigor was lost for the sake of your folly, you are left to recoup the ground lost by your feckless action.”

Lirenda stepped back, numbed as though the last air in existence had been forcibly reft from her lungs.

“Yes.” Morriel snapped off a nod. “I see that you grasp my implications in full.” She took perverse malice in her fallen First Senior’s discomfiture. “If you are
ever
to wield my authority, then you must accomplish this feat before I die. Until then, you are not my named successor. You may claim neither honors nor title within the Koriani Order. Neither will your status improve until the hour that you place the Prince of Rathain in my hands as a living captive.”

“Capture Arithon s’Ffalenn!” Lirenda shrank before the sweeping audacity of the demand. “Merciful Ath! That would set me alone against the might of the Fellowship Sorcerers!” She had lost her quartz jewel. Without its focus to amplify the inborn resonance of her talent, the simplest ward of protection lay outside of her reach. The plea wrenched from her and fell smothered against the hangings which masked out the daylight. “You have handed me a virtual death sentence, or worse, an impossible penance to break the mind and heart.”

“You wish to walk in my shoes and sit the high seat of prime power?” Morriel laughed in bloodless castigation. “Then you will strive and not fail. Or all I have accomplished in your years of privileged study has been a waste of my effort.”

Lirenda struggled to dam hopeless tears. “My jewel was lost to the Shadow Master’s henchmen,” she whispered in crushing humility.

“Prince Arithon returned it by courier, long since!” Morriel beckoned to the girl, who startled up from riveted fascination as if her round cheek had been slapped. “Show her.”

The self-conscious initiate fumbled open the drawstrings of the silk remedy pouch in her lap. Her childish fingers removed the shining, white crystal on its original braided chain.

Lirenda’s heart turned over. Before thought, she raised a yearning hand to touch the crystal’s shining facets and reestablish rapport with its presence. Yet even as her being cried out for the link of her lost quartz’s resonance, the impact of change stepped between. Fickle memory recaptured a living line of melody that stormed her mind, snapped her last hold on emotion, and broke her down in regret.

Under the Prime Matriarch’s critical review, Lirenda burned into a blush. Tears she could no longer contain brimmed over and traced salty ribbons down her cheeks. “The stone was tampered with.” Her
voice emerged like an overcranked string, stressed past its usual smooth alto.

“Obviously so.” Morriel’s colorless lips twitched in distaste. “When the girl here masters the art of selective resonance, your crystal may be returned to you cleansed of its meddlesome influence. Until then, other enchantresses must supply the power you lack. My writ will command them.”

A finger flicked in permission let the young initiate veil Lirenda’s confiscated quartz. Morriel bided with eternity’s patience while the girl’s stubby fingers tripped over ties and strings. When the remedy bag was meticulously secured, she bade, “Be my hands, child.”

Under the Prime’s cryptic instruction, the initiate delved among the quilts. One quartz sphere was selected from the array left tuned by the scryers on lane watch. As the girl timidly cupped its chill weight, Lirenda glimpsed the mirrored image of the nondescript shepherd child. Only now, the boy’s barefoot play had been joined by a Koriani enchantress whose loose hair gleamed auburn in the bleaching kiss of strong sunlight.

“Start there,” Morriel said, then motioned for the girl to surrender the seeing crystal to Lirenda. “Consult the one of ours who knows your quarry’s habits best.”

Another quartz sphere was added to the first. This showed a southcoast wharf, where a fair-haired young woman stood in sailhand’s garb, engaged in an energetic conversation with a slovenly fat man recognizable as the Mad Prophet. Lirenda had no more time to note details before the crystal changed hands to the leveling tone of Morriel Prime’s summary.

“The Shadow Master himself is laired up at Innish in the attic of a merchant’s mansion. He has not been well. The pair you observe through the lane’s eye are his keepers as of this hour. Study them to keep track of his movements.”

Then the penultimate word, cast in dismissal and sentence. “In three days’ time, Sethvir will enter the Paravian Circle at Isaer,” the Prime decreed, her wasted posture insistent. “While the Warden engages his power for spell transit to Mainmere, his earth-sense will be temporarily suspended by the chord of raised lane force. You will come to me then, and deliver the details of your plot to take Arithon. Mercy upon you if a sound plan of action has not been drawn up by that hour.”

Shivering and clammy in the aftershock of dread, Lirenda sought refuge in a window seat ablaze with afternoon sunlight. The courtyard view outside, with its tubs of laden dwarf pear trees, seemed displaced from her fractured reality. A high-flying cloud cover combed to fine floss warned of a weather change to come. Yet even the oppressive summer heat through the glass could not offset the chills of Morriel Prime’s final sentence. Nor had the curious, pitying stares from the peers she no longer outranked been easy to pass off with indifference.

Her world felt as if the foundations had crumbled, with herself like blown ash, cast adrift.

Lirenda shut her eyes. Her porcelain skin still burned ruddy with shame. Each step she had taken had been remarked, even by the impertinent laundry girls who dragged their wicker hampers of soiled linens from the sisterhouse nursery.

The gossip was unkind. The event of a first senior’s downfall was certain to titillate for an uncomfortable interval to come.

Lirenda refused to retreat in self-pity. Chin raised, nerves stinging, she combed out, rebraided, and coiled the jet-satin length of her hair. Grooming helped steady her. If the small, shabby chamber with its lye-scoured floor reflected her sharp drop in station, at least she was given her privacy. While her hands slowly ceased their helpless shaking, she arose, slipped on a fresh robe, and laid a ritual fire in the grate. She regretted her need to muffle the daylight behind curtains, but she needed full darkness to work.

Her birch fire caught and flowered. She fed the new flame with aromatic herbs whose virtues heightened clairvoyance. A lick of gold light touched her offering. The fragrance of moonflower arose, mingled with the stinging pungency of tobacco ground and soaked in an infusion of tienelle blossom. Blue smoke scrolled through the closed chamber and flowed in vagrant script toward the rafters. The one chair, the bare clothes chest, and the straw-ticked cot in the corner came and went amid a sienna pavane of dense shadow.

The fumes thickened, a raw burn on the tender membranes of nose and throat. Lirenda welcomed their acridity, let the familiar expansive lift whirl her to sensitized awareness. Her natural affinity for flame resurged through her, a taproot of current awaiting the expression of her will. Like an addict starved for the intoxicating rush of spelled power, she chose the quartz sphere tuned into the sixth lane, which tracked events at the merchant household at Innish where Arithon s’Ffalenn took his refuge.

The reflection within still depicted the flamboyant blond woman, changed from sea slops into a blouse with silk ribbons. She sat now at the scrubbed planks of a kitchen table, tanned arms crossed amid the crumpled-up folds of a shirt tossed down for mending. Lirenda showed no surprise at the scene. The Shadow Master himself was notoriously hard to track. Mage-trained since childhood, he well knew to keep his mind stilled. Since lane force deflected to emotional vibrations, in his case the Koriani scryers were most often left to map the affairs of his more volatile associates.

The girl under cold scrutiny in the quartz appeared to be immersed in scathing argument with a pallid woman who shook a wooden spoon. Flour flew like wafted pollen when the girl tried to placate by setting a hand on the woman’s wrist. The effort raised a startled, wide glance, then redoubled the tirade.

Lirenda cupped the crystal sphere in cool hands. The shell rims of her lids veiled amber eyes against the play of caught flame. The stone warmed, lined in light. While the resonance of its energies ran in parallel with her thought, the enchantress invoked three seals of mastery. A lifetime of discipline let her fuse her awareness. Linked to the quartz through her inborn affinity for fire, she embraced the tuned synergy and accessed the stone.

Her body seemed to lighten, and the room fell away. Lirenda breathed in the pungent smoke of the herbs until the closed barrier of her mind gave rise to white clarity. Her conscious awareness let go in a rush and merged with the scene in the quartz…

Leagues distant in Shand, Feylind crashed down her rope-callused fist. The plank jumped. Cheap crockery bowls bought used from the market flounced in response, and fine flour puffed from the meal just sifted for bread dough.
“Lysaer?
Sail ships? That’s a laugh to stun a live jackfish!”

She wrinkled her tanned, peeling nose. Azure eyes flashed in pure scorn at her mother, who stood with thin hands clenched to the spoon as if plain wood could ward off a tempest.

Feylind gave her timid rebuttal no space. “Tysan’s prince might say his new fleet’s the best thing afloat, but Arithon’s crews call it the royal shambles. It is, too! Look at the mess they made of their first engagement. The Shadow Master’s men were boarded in chains, and they needed no more than the onset of night to upset Lysaer’s sailing orders.”

Jinesse rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist in transparent need to mask a wince. That news had reached Innish. The unflattering details spoke of three vessels taken on their maiden voyage by the same pack of convicts they had been dispatched to escort into slavery.

Feylind pounced again, unrelenting. “So, you did hear.” She flipped back her straw braid and shot to her feet, restless already with four landlocked walls and the cozy domesticity of bread making. On their hooks by the hob, the polished copper kettles tracked her reflection in a wave of rippling energy. “Bet no one’s bragging of the prize the Alliance lost at Corith, either. Ten royal galleys were assigned to safeguard her. Every last one got their keels chewed. Took those crews half the summer to make simple repairs and limp home. You say I’d do better under officers like those? Sithaer’s coupling furies, mother! Their sort can’t tell a hawser from what hangs cringing limp in their breeks!”