Over that whelming maelstrom of infirmity, the frustration of balked will and spent hope, amid the perilous turn just taken by Tysan’s curse-driven politics, the Prime Matriarch still ruled her domain like honed diamond. Nor did she allow fraility to loosen her grasp upon current events.
Lirenda knew better than to misjudge the request as a petty bid for vindication. She stepped forward and accepted the ice weight of the quartz from her Prime, set on notice by the play of cruel ironies that her character stood on trial yet again. She must perform this small office without flaw, or be judged inadequate to win back her lost rank as the Koriani prime successor.
She dared not vent her towering rage, that her competency was being used to tutor the green candidate set up as her replacement. One deep breath, two; she reestablished her calm. Any work done in concert with quartz required absolute emotional control. Lirenda assessed the sphere held in hand, its directive the tuned key for the array of eight ranged in their stands about Morriel’s chair. One of the Prime’s unobtrusive servants brought her a claw-footed stool.
She sat. Travel-stained clothing could not dim the innate poise of her breeding; she might as well have been offered a throne. The eyes she fixed on the young, blond initiate were antique amber, notched with pupils like primordial night. ‘One begins with the rune of relationship,’ she explained, her tone detached as struck bronze. ‘Such power draws the lane forces into alignment, that one quartz sphere will resonate with the next, letting a live current pass between them.’
Her hand traced the symbol over the crystal, each cross stroke and upright inscribed in etched ribbons of light. ‘Bind the energy into unity with the sigil that demarks the joined circle.’
‘The rune seal for holding?’ the initiate asked, her diffidence emphasized by an affected flounce.
Lirenda’s smile turned graven. ‘Then you’ve learned the twenty-eight primary seals? Very good.’ Her polished encouragement showed none of her contempt, that an enchantress chosen for Morriel’s training should have mastered such basics beforetime. ‘Do you know the next step?’
The woman pinched a peony lip between her even, pearl teeth. ‘The circle is empty?’
‘Yes.’ Lirenda stifled an exasperated sigh. ‘Every spell needs a vector, an energy, to lend it purpose and direction. In this case, your Prime requests linkages to the affairs of the Master of Shadow. Therefore, the tie must begin with knowledge of the subject’s true Name.’ Lirenda cupped the master sphere, stared into its depths, and inwardly sealed herself into a calm that admitted no chink for distraction. She could feel the eyes of the Prime upon her like hot probes, testing, observing, awaiting a reaction that might expose any lingering canker of weakness.
But Lirenda had long since shielded her vulnerable core against Arithon’s beguiling attraction. Venomed hatred remained. She would see the last scion of s’Ffalenn struck dead before she allowed his compassionate potential to awaken the seed of her dormant passion. Disciplined to perfection, she spoke the invocation to call and to bind. Over that matrix, she added the sigil of self-mastery, then into that waiting vessel of containment, the shaped memory of an unmistakable male face. Three times, she called the name of Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn.
The quartz sphere absorbed her building intent. Its matrix took fire and responded, amplifying the tuned alignment of gifted talent and aimed thought. Lirenda sensed the impacting force of that presence storm her unassailable calm. Prepared, she held firm. Trained will locked her mind into permafrost clarity, until an unexpected influx of outside force wrenched her alignment off course. A sweet, sustained note pierced through, then a chord that melted all armor. The opening measure swelled into an intimate play of glad sound that beguiled beyond will to deny.
Lirenda lost grip on her construct of ciphers. The unbearable purity of a melody she had most diligently expunged out of memory burst through and flanked her shield of defenses.
The quartz in her hand pealed back in kind, and magnified that clear cry of rapture into joy that burst all restraint. Then the wrought spiral of harmony raised raw desire, and whirled her off center into trance …
Sucked down, and down again into a well of absolute darkness charged with delights and addictive possibility, Lirenda cried out in furious protest. Her denial just raised a more clamorous, inward betrayal.
The whispered male presence of the musician gave her back his lilting, unbridled laughter. ‘But lady enchantress, surely in this case you made the first effort to call me?’
Dragged into a vista of dreaming vision, Lirenda beheld a starlit night where the winds blew mild and warm. Far beyond the winter’s fast grip, a ship’s masts with its spiderwork of running lines and tarred rigging sliced the sky into graceful geometrics. Nor was the vessel’s quarterdeck unoccupied.
Framed against the sturdy, spooled taffrail, and jeweled constellations skewed at unfamiliar angles by an extreme change of latitude, she confronted the brigantine’s helmsman: none else but the slim, dark-haired bard whose mastery had loomed the exquisite snare that entrapped her.
The angular, stamped features of s’Ffalenn royalty were unmistakable, cast now into a patent, amused inquiry that tipped up one corner of Arithon’s mouth. Across the friable trance which suspended her, his presence ignited her confusion, fed and fueled by a whirlwind of formless emotion.
Lirenda fought to resist the influx of detail that split second of contact engraved on her inner awareness: the fine grace of his carriage offset by commonplace clothing, and the jet strands of hair fallen loose from their tie to tangle and wisp at his temples. If the events of the summer had harrowed his health, in seafaring solitude, Prince Arithon had won back a carefree, if temporary, freedom. His dark breeches were buttoned with engraved silver studs, and his strong, arched feet were bare. His plain linen shirt was a soft, unbleached ivory, and the loose, doeskin laces with their beaded pearl ends were flicked and teased by the winds. The agile fingers which had danced those honeyed measures on fret and string were wound now on the spokes of a ship’s wheel.
Apparently he had sensed her intrusion before her shocked moment of recognition. His sharpened gaze was not fixed anymore on the stars or the compass he steered by.
Nor was his face entirely invulnerable, caught as he was in the listening intensity of sounding her presence in return. She received the impression of eyes that were haunted and deep, and disturbingly focused until he captured her individual identity; not by sight, but by some unseen resonance of intuition kept entrained by his prodigious talent.
‘Ah, Lirenda.’ His voice made disturbing music of her name, while his expression showed dry irony, and his lips widened into the faintest, curved smile of mockery. ‘You’ve reconnected with the gift I left in your quartz crystal, I see.’
Formless in fury, imprisoned in the flux of an involuntary scrying, Lirenda reacted before thought. ‘This should not be possible!’
Arithon’s eyebrows arose. ‘No?’ He brightened. ‘Shall we use the occasion to indulge in a philosophical argument on the principles of magecraft? The result might leave you wiser, if no less enlightened.’
She disdained to answer.
‘Your thinking is crippled by limitations, dear lady, not to mention your beliefs.’ A pause, jammed by the stone-walled strength of her obstinacy. ‘What, no riposte in dry wit? No unhappy jabs at the cuticle? Enchantress, you wouldn’t prefer having me speak for us both?’
Head tilted sidewards, the free wind in his hair, he delighted in choosing the words for her