Kyrialt s’Taleyn was ahead of his prostrate company to recoup his scattered wits. Born of the lineage that bred Shand’s caithdeinen, his heritage granted the depth to withstand the grandeur of the Paravian presence. He marshalled himself, then determined his quivering legs could bear weight. He checked and ascertained the others still breathed; braced the dazed who stirred from blank stupor. His driving concern swung back to his liege as he grounded back into coherency.
The glen remained seized by a powerful hush. Past the range of natural hearing, the stone’s active presence was felt. A quickened vibration raced through flesh and bone as Kyrialt stepped from the verge of the wood. Nearer, his vision became preternaturally heightened. Scent infused his stripped mind as experience, distinct as a physical touch. The dew-soaked air wore the change in the season with the sweet glory of vintage wine. In darkness spiked with the fragrance of pine, the gleam of the marker stone spattered the glade as though each living leaf had been dipped into mercury. The seed-heads of the grasses seemed graced in light. The autumnal tangle of nettle and weed breathed the majesty of Ath Creator.
The same pallid radiance traced Arithon s’Ffalenn, where he curled with his instrument couched in his arms.
Shivering, still awe-struck, Kyrialt knelt.
‘Alt,’ husked the bard, just barely aware. ‘Done. Though I fear the presumption’s unravelled the sinew required to stand.’
‘My strength will bear you.’ Kyrialt’s touch was received without protest as he lifted the lyranthe away. To the soft inquiry voiced by a scout, he replied, ‘His Grace is down, but not prostrate.’
The scour of back-lash already heated the flesh that he handled to fever. Initiate master, Arithon also recognized the draining onset of weakness as his physical body succumbed to release. He let Kyrialt raise him. The shift caused by his unshielded proximity to the mystery that commanded the elements was not sickness. Quiet and sleep would heal the imbalance. Clan lore yet maintained the old knowledge to steer him into a safe recovery.
Kyrialt shouldered the prince’s limp weight. Then he called for the steadiest scout to retrieve the Masterbard’s instrument. Not a man of them did not have stars in his eyes. None walked unmarked, from the touch of grace on their being. The stupefied company regrouped, dazed and stumbling, and surrounded the bard in retreat.
‘Forgive the unseemly haste,’ the young liegeman apologized to his prince. ‘Best we get you away to less-sensitive ground, before the flux of the centaurs’ warding wrings all of us into collapse.’
They settled at last in an open-air camp, where Kyrialt insisted his oathsworn place was to keep watch through his liege’s recovery. Care kept him alert. He stayed at Prince Arithon’s side until the fever broke prior to dawn. Rathain’s prince slept then, a repose kept unbroken, even when the scout sentries reported the arrival of Selkwood’s acting war-captain.
‘Hilgreth himself? Whatever for?’ Kyrialt scrambled erect, stopped by the placating fist of the messenger as he reached in alarm for his sword.
‘No trouble’s here,’ the woman assured. ‘Not even a muster. The old man’s decked out. Full ceremonial, including his clan badge and Shand’s chevron blazon.’
Which meant the occasion would involve a matter of state. Mystified, Kyrialt brushed the caught leaves from his hair. He slapped the stuck pine-needles off his breeches and strove to focus. The after-shock of the Paravian warding still hazed him to dizziness. Still, he managed to stay on his feet when his father’s right-hand officer strode up and exchanged the wrist clasp salute of formality.
Hilgreth came fully armed, a resplendent figure in the belted surcoat once worn to honour Shand’s ancient, initiate kingship. ‘Your father’s sent summons,’ he opened, clipped brisk, his lined face pink in the dawn light. ‘I was dispatched on Lord Erlien’s order to stand in your place as relief.’
The veteran campaigner acknowledged the bard, still curled in vulnerable sleep under a scout’s borrowed rain-cloak. The dark head pillowed upon the fleece-wrapped lyranthe exposed his over-fine features, stripped artlessly naked. But no more the brunt of the old man’s contempt: the war-captain’s gruffness showed awe. ‘Go with a clear heart. Rest assured, I’ll not shame the discharge of your duty.’
Which was near as that campaigner’s outraged pride could bend, by way of apology. Kyrialt slapped Hilgreth’s shoulder, and went.
Lord Erlien s’Taleyn, Caithdein of Shand, awaited his youngest son in the lodge tent maintained by the varied tastes of his mistresses. Clan ways saw a life vow of marriage as an affair of the heart, with the High Earl of Alland a law made unto himself. The five women who loved him held a single passion in common: they shared before giving him up.
Seldom had Kyrialt seen more than one in camp residence at the same time. The four who were not his birth mother had fostered him alongside their natural children since infancy, each of their lord’s brood of stepsiblings cherished with even-handed affection. Whose son or daughter would shoulder the titles was never a source of contention: clan lineage bestowed the perils of inheritance strictly by merit. Fellowship Sorcerers could upset an assignment. A cousin or sister-in-law’s issue might as readily bear the succession ahead of their own.
Therefore, the tempestuous style by which the High Earl sharpened his regency did not reign under his lodge-pole. To enter the home shaped by Erlien’s women was to shelter inside the eye of the storm.
The lamplight was soft, and the earth floor spread over with a luxurious wool carpet soaked in oil of balsam. Throughout the extended warmth of Shand’s seasons, the hassocks and dyed, deer-hide pillows exuded that resinous fragrance to discourage the night-biting insects. The lacquered wood chests and the loomed horsehair mats always gleamed under lavish care. Kyrialt ducked through the black-out felt flap. Always, he knew which foster-mother held residence: personalities spoke through their floral perfumes, or the herbalist’s fust of drying medicinals, or the tang of the rosemary grease the lean huntress brewed to supple her trail gear.
Yet today, he walked in on the crowding presence of all five of the mistresses, his two full sisters, and those of his brawling pack of half-siblings within reach of the High Earl’s summons. Most had found time to put on state dress. Come also, the wizened chieftess in Selkforest’s green, whose Sighted talent at times tapped the future. She held the place at Lord Erlien’s right hand, solemn and stilled at the forefront. Seated to his left, a slim form unfamiliarly hooded in Atchaz silk: Kyrialt started, this once unnerved to meet the proud glance of the scout who was his blood mother. Beyond her hawk’s reserve, a stiff reticence suggested she might have been weeping. The earl’s other mistresses stood at her back, their presence perhaps to support a sister in need.
Kyrialt bent to his knee. Still suffused by the lingering glow of the mysteries, he arose, hands crossed at his chest, as son to acknowledged caithdein. Although he was sworn to Rathain’s crown service, he stood upon Shand’s sovereign ground. Tradition commanded the time-honoured line, made in obligation to charter law. ‘How may I best serve the land?’
His uncertainty showed, amid the dense hush. This session would be no inquiry over the Masterbard’s commensurate bidding of Alland’s deep mysteries: beside the report dispatched with his runner, the ripple evoked by the unfurled wardings had left no born talent in Selkwood untouched.
Pinned before all eyes, Kyrialt could not suppress the expectant glance, flicked towards the clan seeress. ‘What untoward happening should call me away from my place at my liege’s side?’
Though youngest, he once had been his line’s heir apparent, yielded over to Rathain’s crown as a gesture to balance clan honour. The sacrifice meant a half-sibling must inherit the titles. No felicitous appointment, to succeed Teir’ s’Taleyn, after the primary candidate. Kyrialt shivered. The hammered glint in his father’s eyes now bespoke a grief to outmatch his disrupted inheritance.
Yet none ever claimed that the patriarch’s fibre did not match his illustrious ancestry. ‘My son, hear