‘No limits?’ Elaira said, her voice rocked unsteady. The candlelight flared like chipped rust through her hair as she hung on the pause for an answer.
Selidie watched, snake still in her chair, while the steam twined the gloom like the half-coiled ribbons of a spell. ‘No limits but one: if his Grace survives the winter, you will go to him when the thaws reopen the Skyshiel passes. You will attach yourself to his company and behave exactly as you please until such time as his life becomes threatened. Then, you will be free to intercede in his behalf. You have claimed we’ve forgotten our precepts of mercy. Let this prove you wrong. You are given my sanction to wield the power of the Koriani Order in the cause of Prince Arithon’s life.’
‘Merciful Ath, of course!’ Elaira shot to her feet. ‘With the usual condition that he would owe us his personal oath of debt for our service. Even the Fellowship must honor that stricture, no matter if the price we demand should seal his final downfall.’
Selidie inclined her head. ‘We have never granted exception for royal birth or any other privilege of rank.’ A brittle smile bent her lips. ‘The choice remains yours, whether or not to offer your prince the option of our help. You are, as you see, the initiate best suited to carry out this mission. The only direct command you will bear is to stay involved with Prince Arithon’s affairs.’
‘A feat far easier said than accomplished.’ Elaira drew a steady breath that laid bare the unyielding mettle of her character. ‘If I don’t go, I suppose you’d send Lirenda?’
‘My ends can be served out of love, or from hatred,’ Selidie agreed in poisoned logic. ‘Which emotion will sway Arithon’s fate in the straits of his uncertain future?’
‘Love, of course.’ Elaira shouldered the weight of that vicious irony, no less besieged by the dumbstruck antagonist who now looked daggers at her back. ‘I have leave to start immediately?’
‘As you wish.’ Selidie raised the blank sphere from its tripod and gestured for Elaira to approach. An admonition followed as the crystal changed hands, too quiet for Lirenda to overhear. Then the audience ended. Elaira descended the dais and curtseyed, giving the ritual words of obedience. When she arose, her eyes glittered with unshed tears. Granted a terrible grace of reprieve, and the Prime’s formal word to depart, she beat a tormented retreat and slipped through the outer doorway. The Prime’s grant of choice held no triumph for her, but the promise of pain and a perilous, double-edged burden.
Prime Matriarch Selidie reclined in her chair, brilliant eyes closed through a moment of pleased relief. While the Waystone and the Skyron danced with the scintillant light of her ebullience, she said, ‘That woman had the straight courage to refuse me.
Our order’s future may ride on the stunning, weak fact that she didn’t.’
Lirenda cut in with acidic accusation. ‘I have leave to speak? Such a love as she bears could well be strong enough to allow your chosen quarry to die.’
‘Less willingly than hatred.’ Selidie flexed the hand she had used to bond with the Waystone as though the stone’s malice still seared an invisible burn through her flesh. ‘You will learn in due time. The carrot wins better cooperation than the stick.’
Lirenda arose, a whisper of damp silk masking her stifled resentment. ‘Where’s the carrot, for me?’
‘You were no invited witness.’ Selidie met her opening advance with wide-lashed, malevolent challenge. ‘Be most careful how you speak. I choose my weapons with meticulous care. When the last crisis breaks, Elaira will dance to the very same constraints that I’ll use to break and scatter the power of the Fellowship.’
Lirenda tested Selidie’s bitter thread of logic: that if Arithon provided a viable cipher to disrupt the grip of the compact, he must also be key to the world’s future balance. Neither the Sorcerers nor Elaira would sacrifice Athera to deny mankind’s rightful claim to seize dominance. A last, closing stride brought Lirenda to the foot of the low stair, her reflection overlaid in multiple imprint on the Alliance forces still marching through snow in the scrying spheres. ‘I thought you wanted the Shadow Master dead! Or is his Grace of Rathain no longer a threat to Koriani continuance?’
Selidie plucked a slice of cake from the plate and licked butter icing from her fingers. ‘He was a thorn in the path of Morriel’s succession. That issue is ended.’ She nibbled, amused, as she sensed Lirenda’s probe for the crone now securely ensconced within the purloined flesh of youth. ‘As you see, prime power has been transferred intact. The guard has changed. My predecessor is dead, her ashes dispersed by the rituals of due ceremony. Choose your stand on that matter very carefully.’
Lirenda regarded the creature before her with a lioness’s glare and a loathing that curdled her blood. ‘You dare to warn me?’ Challenged by an initiate who possessed eighth-rank training, Selidie must realize her unnatural state was transparently obvious. ‘I’m amazed you have the bald-faced effrontery to allow me to live!’
‘You weren’t listening. I never, ever cast off useful tools.’ Selidie shook out a napkin and whisked away a small blizzard of crumbs. ‘Did you think you retained any shred of good standing to bandy high charges against me? The facts lie against you. Your ambition left enemies, particularly since you made no secret of your disdain for my novice incompetence. In Jaelot, you fumbled a major assignment. Prince Arithon went free. Tell me truth, sister.’ The malice that flashed in those steel-rivet eyes held a chilling familiarity. ‘Will your integrity survive the course of a formal Ceremonial Inquiry?’
Lirenda’s skin rose to a violent flush.
‘I thought not.’ Selidie rescued her cooled cup of tea, tapping the gilt rim with a fingernail. ‘Like Elaira, you must follow my bidding, even if that leaves you with lifelong penance, scrubbing floors in the Highscarp sisterhouse. Who listens to rancor from the mouth of the fallen? You are excused. Understand clearly just how low you have stooped through your weakness for Arithon s’Ffalenn.’
Trapped in the coils of her own indiscretion, Lirenda glared. Pride of upbringing choked her. Crushed under the wreckage of hope and aspiration, she found that Elaira’s true spirit surpassed her. She herself lacked the insolent recklessness to cast fate to the wind for killing stakes. Her rage crumbled, impotent against the complaisance in Selidie’s too-knowing regard. As Morriel, the creature had always danced her inferiors on puppet strings of indebtedness. Before her unprincipled act of possession had usurped a young woman’s body, the crone would have measured and dealt with all setbacks that might steal her hour of victory.
Nor was her judgment of character inaccurate. Lirenda bent her head, unable to shoulder the shame of her outright failure. She could not follow through as Elaira had and stake the irrevocable loss of her awareness for the sake of compassionate principle.
Selidie’s vile nature could not be exposed against the ruthless strength of a matriarch’s hold on prime power.
Left no choice but to curtsey to the floor before her tormentor’s false youth, Lirenda arose in smoldering capitulation and swept from the darkened chamber. Candles flickered and streamed acrid smoke in her wake. Their reflections flagged fire across the sere winter hills pictured over and over in the activated quartz spheres; and in the equally stony eyes of the impostor who wore the Prime’s mantle on the dais.
The page boy flung open the paneled door to the corridor. Lirenda brushed past, well aware she had provoked a subtle and dangerous enemy. The cruel irony cut deepest: if not for the infamous Prince of Rathain, the Matriarch’s chair would never have been tainted by the dark