‘This is pure outrage!’ Crown Examiner Vorrice ground out, hissing loud, whispered protests, even as his rival councilman snapped ringed fingers to a secretary, who responded out of trained habit. ‘No Sorcerer should be cozened! Fire and sword would make a fit ending––’
‘But not at the cost of six hundred lives,’ that glacial personage cut in. His eyes were steel filings snap-frozen in ice, and his voice chilling as he spoke in ultimatum to Sethvir. ‘Your hour will come, if not in my lifetime, then in that of my appointed successors. Light will stand firm against sorcery and darkness without making martyrs over principle.’
While the secretary shuffled parchment, then offered the pen for the endorsement, he signed with no trace of regret. His fulsome, flowery cursive spelled out name and title, Cerebeld, First High Priest to the Prince of the Light, Alliance precinct of Avenor.
In flawless, cast calm, he stepped forward. His own hand relinquished the document to Sethvir. ‘If the forest clan families will ally with the Shadow Master, if they continue to molest honest trade through bloodshed and raiding, rest assured, the Divine Prince and right action will annihilate them. Faith and sheer numbers must tell in the end. Lord Harradene of Etarra will no doubt be pleased to rededicate his city garrison for the purpose.’
Sethvir rolled the new edict into a scroll, his delight rebounded to an unwonted solemnity. ‘Dear man, you might hold an office granted by the hand of usurped mortal power. That gives no license to make choices Ath Creator would spurn for the sake of respect. Always ask before you make foolish promises concerning another man’s free will.’
The full truth, Prince Lysaer’s high priest would discover in due time: that a man who had once dreamed the peace of the trees was unlikely to return to a soldier’s life of trained violence. Of the crack Etarran troops imported to clear Caithwood of its meddlesome enclave of barbarians, not a one would arise in fit state to resume the way of the sword. They would garden, or farm, or live disaffected; some few would find their way back to waking contentment in the disciplines of Ath’s Brotherhood.
After knowing the tranquil awareness of the trees, Lysaer s’Ilessid’s war-bent call to religion would move them to open abhorrence.
Sethvir turned his back on Avenor’s delegation. In complete disregard of the magistrates’ dismay, the Lord Commander’s smoldering fanaticism, and the outrage of Lord Vorrice and the guards, he smiled to the master healer, who waited unforgotten on the sidelines. ‘See to your charges,’ he instructed, even as the first ripple of movement stirred through the stricken men on the cots. ‘They are released now, and waking, and will need human comfort as they find their way back to awareness.’
Someone groaned in the dimness outside the lit circle of candles. Feathers twitched, and fine fabric sighed to the sharp shift in tension as the magistrates craned heads to observe. During that one unguarded moment, the Fellowship Sorcerer slipped away. No one saw his departure. That single, uncanny second of suspension should not have allowed him the time he required to step out.
And yet he was gone. The outer door to the warehouse gaped open. Chill winds bored in, admitting a vindictive blast of snowflakes until a testy official barked for the page boys to shoulder the huge panel closed. Through the yammering complaint of Lord Vorrice’s indignation, Commander Sulfin Evend made incisive, dry comment that the old herb witch in her coat of rag motley had apparently disappeared also.
‘Sorcery! Evil practice engaged in our very presence!’ Vorrice gasped, his face red, and his indignant, ham fists clenched in his sunwheel cloak. He demanded an immediate hue and cry, until High Priest Cerebeld touched him silent.
‘Patience,’ said the man who was the Voice of the Light in Avenor. ‘Evil will not be banished in a day. Nor will our trial against darkness be won through pursuing one Sorcerer prematurely.’ His gaze of notched ice raked over his disgruntled officials, then the royal guardsmen, left empty-handed and shamed. ‘No one failed here.’ His fervor rang, end to end, through the warehouse, fired with faith and invincible conviction. ‘I charge you all, let the timing be Prince Lysaer’s. Tysan needs an heir to ensure the succession. Once the throne is secured, hear my promise. Our Alliance campaign will carry the Light forward. By the grace of divine calling, the minion of righteousness will see an end to sorcery and oppression. On that blessed hour, every city on the continent will rise under the sunwheel standard!’
By the advent of dusk, Avenor still seethed with the mounted patrols rousted out by the Alliance Lord Examiner. Men-at-arms had spent a long afternoon displacing indignant families. Their search swept street by street, and ranged down every midden-strewn back alleyway, seeking a renegade Sorcerer and an escaped convict named as an herb witch.
Evening closed in, gray under the swirling, thin snowfall that had dusted the city through the day. The west keep watch blew the horn that sounded the closing of the gates; the lamplighter made rounds with his torch. Neither fugitive was found, despite a posted crown reward, and the pointed fact the Fellowship Sorcerer was said to be wearing a conspicuous maroon velvet robe. As darkness deepened, and the keening wind blasted flaying gusts down the streets from the sea quarter, the guardsmen retrod old ground like balked hounds. They endured shrill abuse from shopkeepers and matrons, and dodged the rime thrown off the wheels of drays bearing cord wood, and live chickens caged in tied baskets of withies.
Bedraggled and wet, a mounted patrol slogged across Avenor’s central plaza, startling a flock of brown-and-white sparrows. The birds’ circling, short flight set them back down. They pecked at the crumbs thrown by a beggar who sat, huddled against the brick buttresses of the council hall, sharing his crust of stale bread.
‘Damnfool waste of time,’ the patrol sergeant grumbled, spurs gouged to his equally disaffected gelding. ‘Sorcerer’s long gone, you ask me. Ought to be Lord Vorrice himself out here, freezing his tail in the saddle for rabid love of divine principles.’
‘Dharkaron’s black bollocks, man!’ snapped a companion, brushing off snow that melted against his soaked thighs. ‘You’d rather be home warming your ears under your old lady’s wasp tongue?’
‘I’d rather be settled with a hot meal and beer at the Goose,’ another man grumbled. ‘Fiends plaguing wind’s like to give a man frostbite where the goodwife won’t ever need her sick headaches for excuses.’
The deadened clop of hooves passed on by, then faded to the jingle of bit rings and mail. No man on patrol paused over the oddity, that any natural wild bird should have flown to roost before sundown. Nor had a one of them challenged the beggar for loitering. In hindsight, had they shown a half second’s thought, even their horses had behaved as though the fellow had been part of the stone-and-brick cranny where he sheltered.
Crouched on his hams in the silting snowfall, the beggar himself seemed strangely contented, his gnarled hands mittened in a pair of cast off stockings with holes poked through for his thumbs. He had no cloak. Only a torn and moth-eaten blanket which should have done little to cut the wind. The incessant gusts skirled and spun, and ruffled the feathers of the birds, who crowded and pecked to snatch handouts.
A woman with a basket of fish passed homeward from the dockside market. Next came a rib-skinny street cur and a thin child in rags. The dog and the boy received the divided last portion of the bread crust. The beggar seemed not to care that his generosity had disposed of his remaining bit of supper. He sat with his arms wrapped around tucked-up knees, and resumed conversation with the wind devil that coiled into slow eddies before his crossed ankles.
‘Your suspicion is true, Luhaine,’ he mused, while the diamond fall of snowflakes caught light from the streetlamp and spun in lazy spirals that strangely seemed not to disturb the cluster of still hopeful sparrows. ‘The s’Ilessid scion’s already drawn a born talent into his cause. His high priest, Cerebeld, is no sham, but a natural telepath who has tapped into gifted clairaudience.’
‘His inner guidance is Lysaer s’Ilessid?’ Luhaine