Fugitive Prince (25 page)

Morriel Prime closed her eyes. Alongside the risk she might never reawaken, she measured the sum of her efforts.

A momentous labor was done. Time and the unwinding course of events would spring string upon string of chained triggers. Let the scryed snares in her construct play through, and Arithon s’Ffalenn would walk a doomed path into capture. First Senior Lirenda would be called to assume the mantle of prime power. If she held strong, if she proved a fit vessel, the memories of past Primes locked into the Waystone would rise up to channel and guide her.

Morriel rested content with the chance she had snatched back lost hope, and salvaged the legacy her sisterhood preserved for posterity. With the Fellowship brought to heel and the Shadow Master curbed, the Koriani Order could preside over mankind’s freed future.

For his diplomatic visit to Etarra in the eastern Kingdom of Rathain, Lysaer s’Ilessid and his sumptuous state retinue would avoid the Thaldein passes. Ship’s captains seldom dared the North Cape, where tidal rips cut the inlets of a savage, volcanic shoreline. The overland routes through Camris to Miralt Head were preferred by the autumn caravans, as wayfarers and trade goods raced to meet the last of the outbound trade fleets. Before winter churned Stormwell Gulf to a stew of ice floes and spindrift, a raffish breed of northcoast galleymen indulged their sharp rivalries, driving their oarsmen in relentless, fast passage to the ports across Instrell Bay.

Late warmth was wont to linger in the scrub-grown flatlands of Karmak. Each year the alkaline soil of the plain lay ground to fine powder by the ox drays. Leaves and brambles entangled on the verges and wilted under a coating of grit, while air draped like gauze in late-season haze bore a windborne tang of churned dust. The progress of Lysaer’s cavalcade raised muffled thunder in the powdery footing. The endless squealing of cart axles, the chink of brass harness, and the sifting grime fouling their trappings drove the prince’s guard to clenched teeth. Tempers flared, and armor chafed, and meals came infested with sand.

Six days beyond Erdane, the low ground still stretched the same on all sides. A tireless sun stabbed glare off the rocks, and the horseboys were too parched to whistle.

Here, the mettlesome company chosen to spearhead the prince’s
retinue rode in a squinting, watchful wedge. They slapped at the flies which lit on their horses and cursed others that escaped to bite flesh.

“We should make Miralt Head by tomorrow noon,” ventured the company’s captain, a grizzled former headhunter with a craggy profile and tough hands like silk on his reins. The hair on his wrists sprang in tufts through caked grime as he scraped gritted sweat from his chin. “That’s if the camp cook can pack up his crockery without hounding his fool scullion for laziness.”

“That scullion’s my friend, and no layabout,” the prince’s page boy defended. “And anyway, how can you tell where we are? This blighted plain has no landmarks.”

“Used to trap wolves here,” the captain replied. “Packs swarm like vermin, come the snows. A man knows where he is, and how far to shelter, or he’s like to find his horse hamstrung.”

At the page’s unsettled review of the landscape, the man-at-arms loosed a gruff chuckle. “Before sun, there’s the truth, and may Light strike me down if I’m lying.”

“Have a care. His Grace might hear your profanity.” The page tipped a weighted glance behind, where Prince Lysaer rode a horse length to the rear of his standard-bearer.

Through the sulfurous silt of puffed dust, the Prince of the Light rode bareheaded, his gleaming, fair hair a diffracted halo in the citrine glare of strong sunlight. Even through dirt, his presence seemed uncanny, a master-work wrought of alabaster and gilt against the monochrome landscape. The bullion-fringed banner and the stitched silk of its sunwheel seemed brass without luster in comparison.

Voice muffled to awe, the page boy ventured, “Do you believe the realm’s seneschal, that his Grace is sent as Ath’s servant to drive scourge and shadow from the land?”

The burly captain shrugged mail-clad shoulders. “I couldn’t speak the creator’s intent, boy. But Prince Lysaer, now, he’s real. His powers can be seen and felt.” Eyes trained ahead, he finished in respect, “Whether his Grace has divine origins or not, I’ll swear by his name as our given defender against evil.”

A barely sensed movement flicked a leaf by the verge. To a whickered puff of dust, a whine creased the air.

Stabbed by keen instinct, the guard captain shouted, “Archer!” He reined his horse back, sent it crab-stepping sidewards; screamed for his men to close in. “Move! Shield the prince!”

Scarce time to notice the page boy’s mount, shying, and the lad unhorsed in the roadway.

Next a searing, actinic crack whipped the sky. A charge of bolt
lightning scalded everything white. Then a slamming report like the hammer of doom thudded echoes across the bare flats. Men were yelling. Their formation erupted to mayhem as they fought the eye-rolling panic of their mounts.

But no casualty had fallen to bowfire. The prince remained astride his blooded cream charger, stopped in the middle of the roadway. Amid a cavalcade churned into panic, he sat with a statue’s composure. No mere assassin’s ambush held the power to ruffle his uncanny poise. Heaven’s own lightning must leap to defend him, and out of a cloudless, clear sky.

The arrow lay banished to a lacework of blue smoke and a fading whiff of dry carbon.

“Angel of Ath!” the guard captain swore.

He stilled his sidling mount between bit and spurs, dimly aware of the men staring dumbstruck beside him; of the page boy’s loose horse still plunging against the reins looped through its pasterns. The flat taint of dust and the tang of sweaty leather seemed disjointed and wrong, too earthy a setting for miracles.

Lysaer commanded the tableau like a stage, his lofty magnificence set apart. The moment hurt for pure splendor. For a handful of heartbeats, time’s flow seemed erased, the lesser movements of men and beasts jarring.

Then Lysaer s’Ilessid commanded his guard with their half-unsheathed swords to stand down.

The unseated boy moaned and struggled to rise, the fall having injured his shoulder. On Lysaer’s gesture, the royal valet scrambled from the baggage train to offer him succor; the loose horse was caught and soothed quiet by a groom.

Still awed beyond speech, the troop’s guard captain swallowed in flushed shame, faulting himself for slack vigilance.

Yet the Prince of the Light offered no reprimand as he stirred from that terrible stillness. Swathed in the blinding, stitched glitter of his surcoat, he urged his charger toward the verge. Where the crumbled old tracery of wheel ruts gave way to the tangled brush of the plain, he drew rein. The object of his gaze might have been some beggar’s bundle, discarded among the bent weed stalks, except for the hand flung splayed on the earth, blistered with weeping, raw burns.

A barbarian archer, the troop’s captain surmised with a horrible twist to his gut. An assassin struck down by what seemed a godlike manifestation of wrath, his bow a charred ruin beside him.

“Bind him up for trial and arraignment,” Lysaer s’Ilessid instructed.
When his stunned guard captain failed to react, he added in gentle encouragement, “The wretch is unconscious, not dead. Any henchman of Maenol’s who holds murder in his heart can live on to pull an oar for just cause.”

Roused from its nerve-edged amazement, the prince’s company settled, reformed, no man quite bold enough to exchange banter with comrades, or speak. The misfortune of the page boy persisted, a knot of disharmony in their midst. Blanched from the pain of a broken collarbone, his forehead and cheek grazed in blood, he stood on shaken feet, supported by the royal valet.

The troop’s healer summed up his brisk examination and pronounced him unfit to continue astride on a horse that dragged at the bit, restive despite the groom’s efforts to calm it. “The boy can’t manage with one hand for the rein, and the break in the bone will fare poorly if he’s jostled about in a baggage cart.”

“Be still, we won’t leave you,” Lysaer chided the weeping boy. He then turned with crisp orders to his captain. “Mount the clan prisoner on the gelding and tie it to the back of a cart. Then set the page up behind me. My destrier’s gaits are the smoothest.”

The valet looked up, aghast, from the boy’s dusty limbs and bleeding abrasions. “But your Grace! With all due respect, your surcoat will be spoiled with stains.”

“Your Grace, I couldn’t,” the boy stammered.

Lysaer laughed. His blue eyes held the unshakable, kind censure that melted the hearts of his servants. “Should a man who follows my banner be worth less than a few yards of silk? I think not.” The diamond in his ring scribed fire on the air as he extended his hand toward the page boy. “Come, lad. Share my saddle, and save your brave face for some worthier fight against darkness.”

Once the captive was mounted and lashed and secured under guard, the cavalcade mustered in disciplined order to resume its northbound march. Surrounded by diffident officers, Lysaer s’Ilessid was pressed with advice not to camp on the open plain.

“Better we ride on through sundown,” urged the captain. “Your Grace should rest safely inside city walls, protected by a manned garrison.”

Lysaer refused the necessity. “We must not make our entry at Miralt unannounced. Our troops will need to be quartered and fed. As guests of the city, the late hour would pose a discourtesy.”

Then that objection was overthrown by the seneschal, who insisted that a cadre of scouts forge ahead to carry word in advance.

“We ride on,” the captain said, satisfied. “The mayor’s Lord Commander
at Arms shall have his due notice of your Grace’s imminent arrival.”

The royal cavalcade closed the last league to the arched gates of Miralt before midnight. Despite the late hour, they were met by the town’s ranking officers in glittering, parade formation. These were accompanied by two dozen armed outriders with rich, matched trappings, agleam under streaming pitch torches.

Their approach was unhurried. Lysaer had time to note the fringed banners, the silver-gilt helms, and bright bardings stitched from costly dyed silk. His forbearing smile reflected his pleasure and dismay. “By the fanfare, dare we guess? Our scouts’ tale of a light bolt and a barbarian arrow must have caused an excited reception. Those lancers in front look like they’re packing half the city treasury on their backs.”

The seneschal, mounted at the prince’s right hand, squinted through the flare of the torches. “Don’t belittle their pride. That’s the mayor’s personal guard.”

Apparently unwilling to risk offense to an envoy shown the favor of divine intervention, the city of Miralt had turned inside out to arrange a ceremonial entrance.

A taciturn soul who took shocking joy in the occasional gaudy joke, the seneschal observed at bland length, “I imagine they’ve also planned rounds of slow, pompous speeches.”

“Ah.” Lysaer’s eyebrows rose. “If you’re tired, we could duck the long-winded welcome.” He inclined his head and addressed the page boy, whose chin bobbed against his left shoulder. “You’d prefer a soft bed and a posset, I suppose?”

When the child returned an appreciative mumble, a curve of lordly amusement bent Lysaer’s lips. “Well then, we’ll need to outmatch them for pageantry.” To his captain, he commanded, “Ready the men. On my signal, I’d have them dress weapons.”

“As your Grace wills,” assurance came back from the dark.

When the lanterns on the city walls hove into view, Lysaer laid the reins of his weary charger in one hand, raised his right fist, and discharged his gift in a hazed, gold corona over the vanguard of his retinue.

Gemstones and bullion leaped into dazzling clarity. Mail sparkled. Light hazed the sweated coats of the destriers to the gloss of polished satin. A crisp, clear call from the head of the royal column, and the guards in the train raised pennoned lances in salute. The sunwheel standard fluttered in the wash of warmed air, while night became riven to high noon.

Lysaer s’Ilessid in his brilliant white surcoat became the shining center point in their midst. From battlements and gate arch, the rowed ranks of Miralt’s garrison watched his advance in gaping awe. Those city ministers and guildsmen called from home by peremptory summons forgot their complaint. The prince’s unearthly presence might have seemed an arrogant excess of pageantry, but for the young page riding pillion behind.

As the pair neared the gates, all eyes could see the rich surcoat was not stainless white, but marred with bloodstains and dirt. The boy who besmirched its purity was tear streaked, an ordinary mousy-haired victim of mischance who clung in pain-shocked need for solace. The contrast between the child’s needy suffering and the Prince of the Light’s remote majesty framed an indelible image of mercy.

The Mayor of Miralt forgot every word of his hastily scribed formal welcome. The herald stationed in the gate keep hid his face, reduced to gawping silence as the prince drew rein in the roadway.

Before any minister could recover the aplomb to smooth over the lapse in state manners, Lysaer raised his voice and blessed the city in flawless formal language. In seamless diplomacy, he begged leave of needless courtesies. His train had suffered an assassin’s attack. “No man was wounded, but my page boy suffered a battering fall from his horse.”

If ceremony could be excused, a healer was asked, and swift disposition for the men, who were hungry and tired.

Dazzled half-blind, awash in shed glare from the unveiled heat of Lysaer’s majesty, the Lord Mayor managed a stammered assurance. His garrison barracks would house Avenor’s retinue, and the comforts of his own palace would be placed at the prince’s disposal.

Lysaer inclined his head. “Light’s blessing on you,” he said, the gracious assurance behind such acknowledgment no less than his regal due.

To relief on both sides that the speeches were dropped, Avenor’s captain at arms marched his columns through the stone portals into Miralt. Curious onlookers lined the thoroughfare to witness the blessed prince’s passage. Shutters cracked open; balconies filled as the sleep of the righteous was shattered by the fiery, fierce light that knifed through the glass in their casements. Folk stumbled blinking from their pillows to gawk. Only when the royal cavalcade reached the city square did Lysaer mute the splendor of his gift. The furor kept on, fueled now by pure force of momentum. As the word spread, the whole city was raised, the streets packed as a midsummer festival.