Fugitive Prince Read online

  He had his factions riveted, the ambassador saw, struck by a surge of admiration.

  “Arithon s’Ffalenn may have been born a man, but he has foregone his humanity,” Prince Lysaer resumed. “His birth gift presents an unspeakable threat. This, paired with his use of unprincipled magic, redoubles our peril before him.” Lest the quiet give way to fresh altercation, Lysaer delivered his solution. “I sit before you as this criminal’s opposite, my gift of light our best counterforce to offset his shadow. For this reason, I must decline Tysan’s kingship. My purpose against Arithon must stay undivided for the sake of the safety of our people.”

  The logic was unassailable. Defeat on a grand scale had shown the futility of choosing one battlefield for confrontation. The inevitable striving to forge new alliances, to restore shaken trust after broadscale ruin, then the wide-ranging effort to buy a mage-trained enemy’s downfall, must draw this prince far afield from Avenor.

  He said, “For the stability of this realm, I suggest that a regency be appointed in my name, answerable to a council of city mayors. This will serve the crown’s justice and bind Tysan into unity until the day I have an heir, grown and trained and fit beyond question for the inheritance of s’Ilessid birthright.”

  The stroke was brilliant. Havish’s ambassador noted a spark of comprehension hood the eyes of Mearn s’Brydion.

  Though the prisoner pointed out in acerbity that the realm’s caithdein held an earlier appointment to the selfsame office, but without formal ties to city government, his case was passed over. Old hatreds lay too long entrenched. Throughout the chamber came a squeaking of benches, a nodding of hats, as guarded interest eased the tensions of mayors and guild magnates. The most hardened eye for intrigue, the most shrewd mind for statecraft, must appreciate that Lysaer gave up nothing beyond the trappings of crown and title. Sovereign power would largely reside in his hands. Except townborn pride would be salved. The uneasy transition back into monarchy could proceed with grace and restraint.

  City mayors would keep their veneer of independence. By the time they left office, their successors would wear the yoke of consolidated rule as comfortably as an old shoe.

  “We shall have a new order, tailored for this time of need. Past charter law forbids the cruelty of maiming. And this is Avenor, where my dominion is not in dispute.” Lysaer stepped to the edge of the dais, pale as lit flame against oncoming storm as clouds choked the sky past the casement. Whether his gifted powers of light touched his aura, or whether his gold trim and diamonds shimmered in unquiet reflection, the effect was magnificence unveiled.

  The ambassador from Havish forced himself to look away from the brilliance, the drawing pull of a gifted man’s charisma, as the prince’s fired, clear diction pronounced final sentence upon the clan archer.

  “Here is your fate, by my word as s’Ilessid. Your hand shed no blood. But an ultimatum against me was tendered by your caithdein, Lord Maenol s’Gannley. For that, you go free as my spokesman. My safe conduct will see you outside the city gates. Tell Maenol this: he may come to Avenor before the spring equinox and present himself before me on bent knee to beg pardon. Let him swear fealty in behalf of his clan chieftains, and no one suffers redress. But if he refuses, should he declare open war, I will enact sanctions in reprisal for treason against all the people of your clans.”

  A murmur swelled from the benches, slammed still by Lysaer’s brisk shout. “Hear the rest! I have funds at hand to rebuild the eastshore trade fleet. Every galley and vessel which burned in my service at Minderl Bay will be replaced at Avenor’s expense. I promise that every merchant who receives restitution will suffer no more raids at sea. The Master of Shadow and his minions will think twice about attacking with fire, since the newly launched ships shall be manned at the oar by chained convicts. Condemned men fairly sentenced as Arithon’s collaborators, and as of this hour, take warning: Maenol’s own people, if he fails to bind his clansmen under my banner to take arms against Arithon of Rathain.”

  To the headhunters’ stiff-backed dismay, Lysaer granted swift reassurance. “Bounties will not be repealed for renegade clan scalps. But if Maenol s’Gannley refuses his allegiance, double coin will be tendered for each male barbarian captured and brought in alive.”

  For a moment, as if deafened by a thunderclap, the clan archer did not move. Then he drew breath like a rip through strained cloth and gave answer in blazing contempt. “If any small blessing can be prised out of tragedy, I thank Ath my Lady Maenalle never lived to see this. I will return to her grandson, caithdein of this realm, and tell him you threaten us with slavery.”

  Nothing more did he say as his bonds were released, and guardsmen were dispatched to see him on his way through the gates.

  The ambassador from Havish used the confusion to slip through the ranks of halberdiers. Outside in the corridor, he ducked into a window niche, while the sweat dewed his temples and curled the short hairs of his beard. This was not his fight. And yet, even still, his mind seemed loath to relinquish the pull of Lysaer’s seductive delivery.

  The prince owned a terrifying power of conviction. Thirty thousand lives gone and wasted in Vastmark had left his dedication unshaken. Nor would his adherents awaken and see sense, tied to his need as they were through inherited blinders of prejudice.

  The tramp of the men-at-arms and the clansman they escorted dwindled, then faded away beyond hearing. Outside, white on gray, new snow dusted downward. The wind’s biting cold seemed to seep through the casement and strike an unmerciful ache in the heart. The ambassador shook off the memory of Mearn s’Brydion’s thin features, seething in stifled restraint, his clanborn outrage no doubt throttled silent by some stricture from his brother, the duke.

  Worn from the effort of leashing his own temper, the ambassador from Havish shook out his linen cuff and blotted his dampened face. The word he must bear home to his liege boded ill.

  On both sides, the corridor was deserted, its white marble arches bathed chilly silver by stormlight. Lysaer’s voice carried through the opened door in fiery address to his council. “We are gathered here today to begin the long work of uniting all kingdoms against the Master of Shadow. Given his acts of evil, there exists no moral compromise. Our task will not ease until no dwelling remains on this continent where ignorance will lend him shelter. We are come, in this hour, to found an alliance to act against terror and darkness.”

  Steps pattered across the council room as someone inside moved to remedy the door left ajar. Sickened, tired, afraid for the future and anxious to embark on his downcoast run back to Havish, King Eldir’s ambassador hastened away, too burdened to risk hearing more.

  Stag Hunt

  Spring 5648

  Two months after Lysaer s’Ilessid leveled charges of dark sorcery against Arithon s’Ffalenn, the horror instilled by the ruin of the war host had magnified itself into rumors and uneasy fear. Households in mourning for those fallen on the field did not celebrate the festivals. Avenor seemed engrossed by industry, as men of war paid in gold for new swords and laid avid plans to sign on recruits to bolster their decimated garrison.

  At least one free spirit inside city walls chafed at the endless, long councils. Mearn s’Brydion, the rakish youngest brother of the clanborn Duke of Alestron, slammed the door from his quarters and strode into the ice melt which pooled the cobblestone street. Today, the state garments laid out by his servants had been ditched for a briar-scarred set of worn leathers. In wild joy gloved over simmering temper, he snapped in the disapproving faces of his servants, “Let Prince Lysaer’s stool-sitting councilmen share their pompous hot wind amongst themselves.”

  This morning, he would fare out hunting for pleasure, and bedamned to his current assignment as the douce representative of his family.

  The gray, weeping mists wadded over the battlements failed to dampen his fired mood. Draped on Mearn’s shoulder like a desertman’s blanket, the scarlet horsecloth with the s’Brydion blazon threw a splash of sharp color against the
drab dress of guild craftsmen who hurried, sleepy-eyed, to their shops. The pair of brindle staghounds just liberated from the kennel yapped at his feet, muddied to the belly from their bowling play through the puddles.

  Mearn’s laconic, off-key whistles scarcely checked their exuberance. His hounds charged amok, tails slashing, to disgruntle what lay in their path. The racket raised Avenor’s rich matrons from sleep. Not a few howled complaint from cracked shutters. Mearn laughed. While geese honked, and chickens flapped in squawking flight, and alley cats fluffed tails and bolted, the carters loosed fist-shaking curses above the manes of their shying teams. Mearn met each onslaught of outrage with bright-eyed, impervious humor.

  He was clanblood enough to relish the upset his antics caused any man townborn. No one was brash enough to hinder him. Though his clipped accent turned heads and roused threats, Lysaer s’Ilessid decreed that any old blood family bound to his alliance might walk Avenor’s streets with impunity. The duke’s youngest brother brought his happy tumult into the royal stable yard and shouted for a boy to bring his horse.

  Patience sat ill with Mearn. He slapped his riding whip against his boot in brisk tempo while the grooms fetched and bridled his mount. He paced. The horsecloth hooked over his shoulder flapped in the breeze each time he spun on his heel. Restlessness rode his thin frame like hot sparks, while the deer hounds bounded in frenzied gyrations around him.

  At last, infected past discipline, they bayed their uncontained joy. Their deep belling note spooked the highbred charger, who sidled and upset the rake the new horseboy had forgotten to tidy.

  Milling, shod hooves crushed the handle to splinters. The horse flung back, snapped its head tie, and added its thunderous commotion by galloping loose through the stable yard.

  Mearn cursed the groom for his inept hands, then tossed him a copper for his trials. In his bitten clan dialect he added language which raised the eyebrows of the drayman who idled beside his harnessed team. Then he insisted to all inside earshot that he should saddle his mount for himself.

  “Please, no lord! I dare not allow you,” the groom stammered, red-faced. The rest of the yard boys had wisely made themselves scarce. “Our Master of Horse would see me thrashed bloody if he catches me slacking my duties.”

  “He’ll thrash you anyway,” Mearn argued. “Or does he not care if your charges fly loose?” He pursed his narrow lips in disgust and emitted a piercing, high whistle. His bitch hound howled in chorus with the noise, but the charger, obedient, stopped its clattering flight. It poised blowing, its high neck arched and its ears swiveled back, listening to its master’s approach.

  Mearn’s grumbling irritation changed to endearments. He stroked the bay’s glossy shoulder. Then he laughed and spoke a command through the redoubled yaps of his hounds.

  The horse turned, dealt him a companionable shove, then trailed him like a puppy as he recrossed the stable yard.

  “Fetch out my saddle, and then get you gone!” Mearn called to the fidgety groom. “This gelding never did like a town-whelped runt. Likely you’d just find your skinny butt nipped as you tried to fasten his girth.” Suddenly all pared efficiency, he tossed his blazoned saddlecloth over the horse’s back. As the boy still hovered, he added, “Hurry on! Do you think the deer will wait while you stand there?”

  Minutes later, Mearn vaulted astride, shouted his hounds to heel, and wheeled his mount through the gate. A razor-edged irony whetted his smile.

  As his three older brothers would laugh themselves prostrate to explain, he held stag hunts in passionate contempt. His purpose in plying the wilds alone was for game and stakes far larger, dangerous enough that he risked his life as forfeit.

  Belying even the semblance of secrecy, Mearn made his racketing, flamboyant departure through the moil of the early-spring market. Chaos surged in his wake. Curs barked, and carriages swerved, and crated sows squealed in their wagon beds. Even the bored guards on Avenor’s inland battlement were relieved to see his turmoil pass the gates.

  He reined off the muddy road into the shrinking, gray mounds of old snowdrifts. The bare, tangled boughs of the oak forests engulfed his whipping scarlet horsecloth and his laughing whoops to his horse. The baying of his hounds rode the land breeze, until distance mellowed that also. The s’Brydion line was clanbred, barbaric to the bone. Lysaer’s captains agreed that their envoy from Alestron was unlikely to be troubled by his murdering, woodland kindred, even had any of Tysan’s blood chieftains dared to skulk in the bogs within reach of Avenor’s armed might.

  The spring was too new for greenery. Ice still scabbed the north sides of the dales, and the air held its chill like a miser. What warmth kissed Mearn’s shoulders was borrowed from the sun, half-mantled in streamers of cloud. Their shadows flowed like blown soot across the valleys, and rinsed the bright glints from the streamlets. Mearn gave on his reins, let his horse and his hounds drink the wind at a run, as man and beast might to celebrate life as frost loosed its hold on black earth.

  He carved further inland, his horse settled to a trot, through deeper thickets and trackless mires, beyond range of Lysaer’s royal foresters. His hounds coursed ahead. If their quarry was not always a swift-running deer, their master scarcely cared. The hound couple badgered any game they could flush. Wild lynx, or red fox, no boon to their training, they were left to track as they pleased, and only whipped off the scent if their hunt veered them northward or south.

  Due east, Mearn was bound, his brother’s ducal blazon now mantled beneath the drab folds of his cloak.

  By noon, under pallid gold sunlight, he reached a bare hillock, scattered with wind-stripped, buff grass. He drew rein there, dismounted, loosened his girth. His stag hounds flopped, panting, to snap at the tickle of dried seed heads as though they were bothered by flies. The bitch whined. The horse shook its mane and rubbed its sweated headstall against Mearn’s leather-clad hip.

  He shoved back the gelding’s nose with a gently spoken epithet, all trace of roguish pleasure erased from his taut, narrow features. One year and events had changed him. His quick mind and observant eye were bent now toward other pursuits than tumbling loose ladies and gambling. The breath of the breeze fanned a chill on his neck, the lovelock he had worn since his first growth of beard shorn off in cold purpose since Vastmark.

  A dove called, mournful, from a thicket.

  Mearn swung about at the sound, raised the corner of his cloak, and unveiled the ducal blazon. Then he found himself a dry, flat rock in a cranny, and sat out of the wind while his horse grazed.

  A slow interval passed, with Mearn touched to prickles by the certain awareness that he was being watched from all angles. Then, with no ceremony, a young man moved upslope to meet him. His approach scarcely woke any sound from dry grasses. He wore undyed leathers and a vest with dark lacing. He carried bow, knife, and sword as if weapons were natural as flesh. Large framed, deliberate, he had a step like a wary king stag’s. His light eyes, never still, swept the hillock behind, then Mearn, and measured him down to his boot soles. On that day, the high chieftain of Tysan’s outlawed clansmen was nineteen, one year shy as the old law still reckoned manhood.

  “Lord Maenol, Teir s’Gannley, caithdein of Tysan,” Mearn greeted. He arose, inclined his head in respect, and shared grief for the grandson, whose titles and inheritance now burdened his young shoulders through Lysaer’s murder of his predecessor.

  Unlike the deceased Lady Maenalle, the heir returned neither welcome nor greeting. He stood, chin tilted, silent, while the gusts flicked the laces on his clothing.

  No whit less stubborn, Mearn met that challenge with a sheared, bright-edged smile. If the s’Brydion ancestral stronghold had withstood the wars of the uprising; if his family owed fealty to another kingdom and another chieftain on the farthest shore of the continent, the ways of charter law and the old codes of honor were still held in common with Tysan’s clans in Tysan. Shared trust ran deep beyond words.

  “You have taken an unmentionable risk to com
e here,” the boy said at last in his startling, mellow baritone.

  “I bear unmentionable tidings,” Mearn countered. “And a packet, bound for Arithon, sewn in the lining of my saddlecloth. I went through Sithaer itself to keep that from the handling of Lysaer’s overzealous pack of grooms.” He added, “You’ll want to read the contents before you send them on. Your clans are the ones most threatened.”

  Tysan’s young caithdein took that ominous statement in stride; such troubles were scarcely new. His own parents had fallen to headhunters. “It’s risky to be sending late dispatches across,” he pointed out, vexed more for the snags in the timing. “Arithon plans to sail as soon as the weather settles.”

  Small need to dwell on the risk of disaster, if their covert crossings to his island haven at Corith were sighted. The fair, warming weather would see the first trade galleys nosing their way from snug harbors, the earliest at sea always manned by the keenest, most vigilant captains.

  “I leave that decision in your hands, then.” Mearn strode to his grazing horse, removed girth and saddle, and sat down with the redolent, damp horsecloth. He used his knife to pick out the hem stitching. The packet inside was wrapped in cerecloth, by its weight and thickness no less than purloined copies of state documents.

  “Oh, well-done,” murmured Maenol. Still standing, stiff backed, against a sky that now threatened fine drizzle, he nipped through the twine ties with his teeth, then flipped through the pressed, folded parchments. The dark arch of his eyebrows turned grim as he read. Documents recording rightful claim to clan prisoners to be bound over into slavery; documents of arraignment without trial for acts of dark sorcery, attested and signed, which named Prince Arithon criminal and renegade. Maenol’s sharp features, never animated, stilled to pale quartz as he perused the signatures and seals.

  “Merciful Ath,” the words torn through his reserve as if jerked by the barbed bite of steel. “Is there no end? How can so many mayors bind these acts into law, upon no proof or surety beyond Lysaer’s spoken word? It’s not canny!”