Traitor's Knot Part 13

Lirenda placed her wrapped burden in the Matriarch's lap. Under orders, she had to kneel on the tile, then set up the shielded tripod with its forged ring of containment. Next, her fingers were needed to untie the jewel's silk wrappings. She unfolded the cloth, taking desperate care not to graze the perilous contents. The bared presence of the order's great amethyst puckered her skin with unpleasant chills. Worse torment still, she sustained the dazzling proximity of its powerful presence as she used shielded touch, and seated the sphere into its cradle.

Longing seared her to obsessive desire. To be this close to the penultimate might of the order outmatched every concept of cruelty. Lirenda steamed, become little more than the acting hands for a position that should by due right have been hers. A helpless slave, she stepped clear as ordered, while the onlooking seniors took position to one side, and the active seeress settled herself into trance. Then the usurping Prime leaned forward and rested her brow against the faceted jewel. The southern air chilled to ice as she woke the dire force of the Waystone's focus. Lirenda sensed the harrowing flux of stirred energy as the great amethyst engaged. She shuddered to its contrary tides of charged malice as its matrix was tuned and locked into submission. Once the stone's wayward forces were bound, firmly under the Matriarch's command, Lirenda was asked to enact the sigils to connect the grand focus to a smaller quartz sphere, preset by the seeress for scrying. Harnessed as thoroughly as the ma.s.sive amethyst, she must act in strict concert, her neat, puppet gestures entrained with the Matriarch's invocation.

When the poised sigils meshed, a thread of hot light burned through the stilled air, there and gone, as the paired crystals equalized their resonance.

'Now,' said Prime Selidie.

The seeress invoked her high art, made the dedicate vessel to her Matriarch's will.

A saffron streak of sunshine speared through the quartz sphere. As the image resolved fully, the need to empower the Great Waystone became obvious: this scrying bridged an expanse of salt water, prying into the gloom of a ship's cabin lit by the checker-board glare from an open hatch grate. Further, the vessel carried a powerful protective talisman: the view came through scattered with flecks as the cipher warding the hull diffused the imperative of the Prime's sigils. The specialized training of Lirenda's lost rank let her interpret the signature of the lane tide and divine the ship's east-bound course, south-west of the Cascain Islands.

'Merciful grace!' murmured Porthmark's t.i.tled peeress. ' I never knew such a potentized scrying could be done in an ocean setting!'

Selidie's secretive lips framed a smile. 'The Evenstar has carried our tag for some time. We had a ship's chandler on our rolls. He discharged his due debt by embedding our wrought-copper sigil under her sheathing when she was careened.'

The elderly senior showed dismayed interest. 'The merchant brig bearing an Innish registry that's been shipping relief to the west? Don't say her mission hides covert motives.'

'Listen, you'll see,' Prime Selidie responded. 'The ship's records might appear spotlessly clean. But her captain has been a loyal supporter of the Master of Shadow since childhood.' Under her direction, Lirenda fine-tuned the array of sigils. The increase in power, upstepped by the Waystone, pressed the air into palpable tension. The scene in the quartz sphere flickered to life and unveiled two figures engrossed in a scathing argument . . .

'. . . won't put in at Innish, to try would be madness!' Feylind's long braid flicked like rope in the shadow, to the adamant toss of her head. 'A ferreting customs keeper's forced inspection could land us in trouble over our heads!'

Her first mate's remonstrance bounced back, through the irritable clomp of his sea-boots. 'Because of our pa.s.senger? Sithaer's deathless fires, Captain! The crew isn't partial. They'd see your live contraband thrown off for bait before they would sail to Alestron without putting in for provisions. We'll be down to stale water and salt beef with maggots. Run out of spirits, besides, you'll see your best sailhands swim for Shaddorn's brothels the moment we wear ship to round Scimlade Tip!'

'Oh, "Captain", is it? Formal t.i.tle, but no respect for my orders?' Feylind chose a word she had learned in the stews rousting laggards. 'The bullheaded crew on this hulk is well paid. They'll use their brains, not their b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!'

'You say?' Before she launched into the rest of her tirade, the mate grinned, caught her close, and pinned her mouth under his challenging lips.

Wrung breathless, half-laughing, Feylind wrenched free. 'That ploy isn't going to soften me, this time.' She pushed him off, only to find her body a.s.saulted more thoroughly. The hand wound in her shirt front jerked her to a stop. Two b.u.t.tons tore loose. She was bare underneath. 'Alestron,' she gasped, as her mate cupped her breast. He kissed her again, and through the busy interval, expertly began to unbreech her.

'What about your twin?' Neat, sun-browned, and sculpted with muscle, her longtime lover tasted her ear, then her throat. 'Fiark will gut you if you break a schedule that's been kept as dependable as the turn of the tides.'

'Fiark can howl himself inside out -'

Smothered again, Feylind pounded the mate's back as he lifted her onto the berth.

'Stop biting,' he grumbled into her neck. 'This tub stops at Innish, as scheduled. The runaway woman can be dressed up in slops. Hands chapped like that, and scrubbing a deck, she wouldn't be given a second glance.' A pause, a heave, and a burst of soft laughter. 'Feylind, you wild cat, why not just give in and enjoy this!'

Her reply emerged m.u.f.fled from behind his broad chest. 'Randy stud horse! Why don't you give up? I won't forget how we dumped standing orders to transfer a specific party of hot fugitives onto the Khetienn, off sh.o.r.e.'

That persistent subject engendered a sharp pause. The mate rolled onto his back, Feylind caught against him, her slender waist fanned by the crimped gold of her braid, which, rifled of its tie, came undone. 'Dharkaron's Spear and Black Horses, woman! Will you never let loose? Fiark will have dispatched a fishing lugger long since to sail that bunch out to rendezvous.'

Feylind slugged the blanket beside the mate's ear. Her man never flinched, only shifted his shoulders and kneaded languorous fingers into her nape.

'He didn't,' Feylind retorted, though with less heat. 'Dakar hates fishing boats, and the rescue in Jaelot was a Koriani game-piece. Did you know that the witches spell-crafted a gra.s.s-lands goatherd for bait? He's said to look like Arithon's double. Dakar's too wily to play loose with that quarry. I'll lay you six coin weight, gold, to a toss in the sheets, that the spellbinder will have stayed stranded in port before entrusting his charge to a bought captain and a strange vessel.'

'Here's my toss in the sheets, and without your pestering contest,' the mate murmured, complacent. His grin flashed in the gloom, then vanished again, to nibble another sweet patch of flesh.

Feylind gasped and recoiled, just once. Then she flushed and subsided against him. 'I'll show you exactly what you can toss . . .'

'Oh?' Her man tucked her close as tenderness crumbled down her resistance. 'Keep your gold, minx. I'll make you a bargain better than that. Stop at Innish, as scheduled. I'll back your case against Fiark. You'll have that east-bound cargo you're craving -'

Feylind squirmed, caught his shirt-tail, and jerked the cloth over his head with indulgent pleasure. 'One bound for Alestron, you randy goat. Or trust me, the next time you cozen me this way, I'm likely to reach for my rigging knife and put an end to your shameless distraction. . .'

Selidie snapped a wrapped hand across the Waystone, cutting off the entrained thread of the scrying. The quartz sphere went dark. While the heart of the amethyst glimmered with sullen needles of light, idle and still perilously active, the Matriarch addressed the hospice peeress. 'If Evenstar puts in at Innish, you will carry out my orders. Review our books for oaths of debt. I want a port exciseman to call for an impoundment, and a cooper that swims to access that brig in the course of her cargo inspection. The marked sheathing strip we have under the hull shall be augmented with a sigil of tracking. I will create the new ciphers, myself. They will be tied, but inactive, and shielded to be overlooked by the Fellowship's spellbinder.'

The Forthmark peeress clasped fretful hands. 'We may not have an exciseman on the Innish rolls. What then?'

Selidie stared back, unblinking. 'You will get one.'

The peeress stiffened. Uneasy with the implied demand to use duress, she glanced away and attempted to hedge. 'You can't guarantee that your doctored brig will finally reach port at Alestron. Or that, once there, Dakar and your targeted quarry will be available to go aboard.'

'If Evenstar sails east, we'll stand prepared.' Selidie raised her imperious chin, her dismissal including the seeress.

Through the rustle of skirts as the circle disbanded, the peeress strove one last time to relieve her distress. 'Wouldn't we be wiser to let the young double go? He's least apt to see harm if he stays among Arithon's active a.s.sociates.'

'We will leave no loose ends!' Stilled in her chair, aligned with the roused Waystone, the Prime forced the subject to closure. 'Fionn Areth owes a binding life debt to our sisterhood. As Lirenda's f.e.c.kless creation, would you insinuate we're not responsible for safeguarding the course of his future?'

The Forthmark peeress bent her knee and curtseyed in contrite obeisance. 'Your will be done, Matriarch. You shall have your two men and your plan to waylay the brig.'

Lirenda fumed, left alone with the Prime, who had just served her with a vicious, back-harided betrayal: Morriel herself had sanctioned the act of Fionn Areth's transformation. Forced to stand in the disturbing coronal discharge thrown off by the active Waystone, Lirenda could raise no word to defend the implied burden of her disgrace. Instead, all her skill and initiate knowledge were put to ruthless use. Since the Matriarch was crippled, the ill-set chain of sigils for Evenstar must be framed, here and now, by her captive hand.

The cipher was not beyond reach of her expertise. As an eighth-rank initiate, Lirenda had no equal within the order, excepting the Prime, who alone had survived the ninth test. When Selidie dictated the central pattern, Lirenda realized at once the design was too powerful: this chained sequence would do more than straightforward tracking. The outer ring of characters was sequenced for summoning, in force and limitation attuned to shape what seemed an insidious trap. Prime Selidie intended to recover Fionn Areth. Yet Lirenda could not escape the intent as the last layers of strung energies were appended. Methodology forced the surprise revelation: the runes for lawlessness, excess, and chance twined through the squared sigil that was used for binding stray iyats.

No fool, Prime Selidie noted her comprehension. Alone, without witnesses, the usurper could not resist a self-satisfied smile. 'We'll call down a storm of fiends at the moment of my choosing. The spellbinder has a known weakness, there. His f.e.c.kless emotions will never cope. Risk of damage must turn Evenstar's course back to sh.o.r.e, where an Alliance ambush will be lying in wait. The brig will be boarded, and we'll s.n.a.t.c.h our prize. More than one, to be sure. The Fellowship's still tied hand and foot, knitting grimwards. Who will come to answer Dakar's cry for rescue?'

Lirenda could not comment. Obliged to st.i.tch sigils one after the next, helpless as any other trapped p.a.w.n played into Selidie's design, she could not escape sensing the unspoken afterthought: that Fionn Areth's recovery was, in fact, nothing more than a surface distraction. The true target behind today's ploy would be the blonde-haired captain who carried Prince Arithon's sworn bond of protection.

Feylind and her brig; Lirenda would have gasped for the bold revelation. For Dakar's predicament was certain to draw the Teir's'Ffalenn away from his impregnable refuge in Kewar.

The underlying motive dangled almost within reach, that a second round of stalemate could be broken. If the Master of Shadow came into the open, initiate Elaira would be compelled to resume the lapsed burden of her Prime's directive. She would have no choice but leave her sanctuary in the hostel of Ath's Brotherhood, and pursue her deferred involvement with Arithon's close affairs.

Selidie's next instruction disrupted the thread of Lirenda's rapt speculation. 'Add the quadrangle runes of chaos, then close out the sequence with Alt, but specifically leave the cross on the stave open-ended.'

The Matriarch watched with half-lidded eyes, while the hand of her p.a.w.n fashioned the sigil with its incomplete rune of ending. The result would leave the spell's pattern stable, but dormant, until the hour Selidie willed its completion. Secretive, silent, the Prime wielded the order's supremely powerful gemstone, while raised power flowed into the work of Lirenda's subordinate fingers. Yet under the mask of those porcelain-fair features, the usurper's control was not perfect. When the last cipher was scribed, and the ritual incantation released the charged might of the Waystone, her glance flashed like a stalking predator's.

Lirenda knew, that expression, had witnessed the same ferocious intensity when the past Prime had plotted her vicious double entendres.

'What else?' raged Lirenda, scalded by a frustration that hammered the closed walls of her mind. 'What else is afoot, you unscrupulous imposter?'

The sly intrigues of this Matriarch spanned a millennium of machination. Some snare of artful subtlety would be lurking to trip the s'Ffalenn b.a.s.t.a.r.d. A covert entanglement far more invidious than the traditional threat of a binding made in recompense for Koriani services, that, by surface appearances, Elaira had been sent to extract.

No clue suggested what pitfall awaited the crown prince that Prime Selidie wove her wiles to entrap.

Lirenda seethed, impotent, as the Matriarch's sweet treble remanded her to the role of a servant. 'Veil the Waystone, at once. Then send for my pages. They'll fetch pen and paper, and the lap desk from my chamber. You'll write my correspondence, while the cook's boy brings sweet cakes along with my morning tea.'

Autumn 5670 Dispatches Closeted with his chancellor to address the influx of devotees from Avenor who come seeking converts to follow the Light, King Eldir of Havish adds the sealed parchment bearing Princess Ellaine's witnessed statement and a copy of the proof that condemns Lysaer's false regency at Avenor, saying, 'I realize the errand is dangerous, but this missive must reach Tysan's caithdein, Lord Maenol, by way of the clan scouts who stand guard in Caithwood . . .'

When a network informant sends a reliable report that Lysaer's errant wife has boarded an east-bound ship for Alestron, High Priest Cerebeld relays orders to his acolyte at Jaelot: 'You will approach Duke Bransian s'Brydion as the Light's envoy, and acquire hard evidence of his collaboration in Princess Ellaine's abduction . . .'

In the black deeps of the void between stars, hard-pressed by a ravening horde of free wraiths and facing the threat of a redoubled a.s.sault by a new wave just arisen from Marak, the Sorcerer Kharadmon unleashes a cry of distress to warn Sethvir, back at Althain Tower . . .

Autumn 5670 V. Convolutions Asandir abandoned his uneasy town visitor in Althain Tower's first-floor guest suite, closed the door on a promise to return in the morning, then bolted at speed up the unlit stairwell. The sky past the arrow-slits now showed scattered stars. Yet if the gusts blew, scoured clear after rain, another storm brewed past the rim of the world that threatened a large-scale invasion. The Sorcerer ascended two stairs at a stride, impelled by the force of raw urgency.

Scarcely twelve hours returned from a grimward, with no chance for rest or recovery, he faced another breaking disaster.

A glimmer of gold light glazed the King's Chamber landing, two levels above. Since the torch set burning for Sulfin Evend's arrival had long since spent its fuel and gone out, this light was sourced by a female adept clad in the white cowl of Ath's Brotherhood.

'Another swarm of free wraiths from Marak, I've picked up the damaging gist.' As Asandir's hurried pace brought him abreast, she fell in at his side, unruffled as he continued his clipped accusation, 'Sulfin Evend's a s'Gannley descendant with the latent gift of his great-grandame's precocious talent. He sensed the impacting distress in your call! Since no one has time to soothe his raw nerves, you might have thought to come down for me.'

The adept touched his sleeve in tacit apology. 'In fact, I could not without causing more harm.' The Alliance doctrine already held that Ath's Brotherhood practised fell craft, hand in glove, with 'Shadows' and Fellowship tyranny. Her presence at Althain would appear to confirm that wrongful and dangerous impression. 'I respect your concern,' Asandir all but snapped. 'But that man downstairs has too sharp an intelligence for me to waste a moment with less than the truth. Dead set as he is to pick quarrels with necromancers, he'll have to learn fast that you, and I - and Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn - are anything but his enemies.'

Up the rough granite stair, past the fifth level's locked double doors, Asandir's deer-hide boots made no sound. His purposeful focus through the ascent stirred the adept to alarm. She said, 'Sethvir expected you would kindle the third lane beacon.'

The Sorcerer maintained his cracking fast pace, with speech crisp as gla.s.s tapped by iron echoing in the chill darkness. 'If I light the beacon in summons, Luhaine would be pulled out of Teal's Gap before he could finish the bindings to curb the Khadrim.' A corporate Sorcerer required five weeks to reknit the wardings that held the Sorcerer's Preserve. As a shade, Luhaine had to invoke tedious steps to safeguard his unshielded presence. The labour he shouldered would take that much longer and expose him to far greater danger.

Asandir rushed the next flight, still expounding. 'Traithe's raven would sense the lane's summons, as well. Should I let him worry? He's too far away to respond. If Davien changed heart and decided to help, surely before now he'd have troubled himself to lift some of the strain off Sethvir!'

Gold ciphers flashed; the adept turned her hooded head, startled. 'You can't mean to respond to this crisis alone!'

Asandir pa.s.sed the eighth landing, still climbing, and breathless enough to sound irritable. 'Call Luhaine to go? I can't sanction the choice. Not with Lysaer in jeopardy. We cannot afford to strap another sorcerer's resources off-world indefinitely.'

Stopped, appalled, the adept stared as they reached the ninth-floor threshold, and Asandir checked his stride to fling open the door. Beyond, the eyrie chamber that held Sethvir's library lay silted in gloom under starlight. 'You realize I can't intervene in support of your reckless choice!'

'As you wish, naturally.' The Sorcerer's shadowy form swept ahead. His haste raised eddies of book-scented air, and flicked dust from the sheaves of the quill-pens stuffed in their crocks atop the carved ambry. The ebon table was already bare, cleared of its cached stacks of books since the onset of Sethvir's prostration. 'Go or stay,' said Asandir, unequivocal. 'I will enact what is necessary.'

The adept clasped tight hands, her censure kept silent: the Sorcerer's intent to slip free of his body, then fare into the void without posting safe oversight was no less than a lethal risk. Kharadmon had been sheared, live spirit from flesh, caught short in the same adverse circ.u.mstance.

Too rushed for precautions, Asandir tossed back a pressed explanation as he rifled a cupboard and withdrew a brazier of black iron. 'The trace imprint of the spell that attracted these wraiths was a working of mine, made in partnership with Sethvir. I share the permissions that frame it.' Still talking, he a.s.sembled the antique tripod at the center of the stone table. 'Where Luhaine and Kharadmon could only react in defence, I can enact a direct intervention based on the right of my authorship.'

The adept did not leave.

Sethvir 's herb stores yielded a braid of dried sweet-gra.s.s to ignite the brazier. Asandir filled the pan, then looked up, his glance hidden steel under the shrouding of darkness. 'Marak's wraiths are voracious. They consume by possession. With Athera imperilled by three deranged grimwards, our Fellowship cannot possibly field an a.s.sault. If we tried, we would certainly open the chance of provoking a large-scale invasion.'

Outlined by the p.r.i.c.ked glimmer of stars shining beyond the latched cas.e.m.e.nt, Asandir scrounged for a sliver of chalk amid the odd caches of snail-sh.e.l.ls and the pebbles with mica that Althain's Warden had collected to amuse visiting crows. Then he swiped the layered dust from the table-top and ticked off the cardinal points to frame a pa.s.sive circle of warding. His hand did not shake. The straight line of his brows, the taut cleft of his mouth were the mask of a man who seemed heartless.

The adept, who read auras, saw the unshielded spirit. Asandir's inner nature held caring so fierce, the deep flame of it seared without surcease. She crossed over the threshold. The subtle, stirred light that moved with her presence brushed the Sorcerer's peripheral awareness. He checked, raised his head. The focused restraint behind his mild glance could have melted fixed stone with compa.s.sion.

'I might be bound by the will of the dragons,' Asandir said. 'This does not make me a puppet. Your grace is the exalted gift of Ath's peace, and not suited for sordid conflict. Leave here. Do as your given nature requires, and stay on your path with my blessing.'

She smiled. 'I would sing in sorrow for the greed of your wraiths, but not share in your action to bind them.'

Her dusky complexion lost in the gloom, she presumed, and clasped the Sorcerer's wrist. He was as lean as the wind itself, all strong bone and wire-strung tension. 'Have you done more than eat, since your working to stabilize Radmoore's grimward?' she chided. 'No sleep, not so much as a cat-nap? Then I will stay, and keep watch for your health.'

Asandir touched her knuckles to his forehead in salute. 'Brave one,' he murmured. 'The trial of these times is a burden on us all. I'm heartened to have you beside me.' Eased free, he bound his closed circles with runes to rein the beacon into containment. Then he asked due permission, invoked the four elements, and tuned his established rapport to channel the lane flux through the brazier.

The herbs flashed alight, releasing a plume of sweet smoke. Their kindled spark blazed on without fuel, a searing point of indigo blue that notched the Sorcerer's cragged features with creases. Asandir hooked a chair and sat down.

Against the looming back-drop of book-shelves, the sliced gleam of gilded Paravian lettering demarked his gaunt silhouette. He laced his competent, large-knuckled hands. Eyes closed, without ceremony, he bent his silver head and settled into deep trance.

Ath's adept took position beside him, quiet hands laid on his shoulders. Their broad strength was as bed-rock. Asandir's auric field wrapped her, dense as the fires of a star. The intimacy of close contact laid bare the painfully volatile paradox: the breathing vessel that housed his vast presence was most fragile, a living tissue of flesh and bone no less than mortally vulnerable.

The adept resisted the cry of her fear. Poised at the crux, she saw far too clearly as Asandir stepped into the breach. For Athera herself had been left wounded by the wanton acts of the dragons. Ath's gift of love, sent in redress, had been the Paravian races; and the Fellowship, who stood as the drakes' chosen champions, were appointed to protect the resonance and safeguard the heart of the mysteries that sustained them.

A mis-step tonight might tear the fabric of a world, unspinning its expansive existence. If Asandir failed, the penultimate truth in Athera's weave might be dimmed, lost to the pain of entropic separation, destruction, and sinking darkness. If the mysteries withered, the conclave of Ath's Brotherhood could not hold open the gateways or maintain the exalted discipline of their mastery.

Peacefully as sunlight cast through a pool, the adept sent her calm rea.s.surance. 'Keep your strength. Hold the line.'

She experienced the moment, as the Sorcerer balanced himself into a state of stringent harmony. Mind and will, emotion and thought were centered into alignment. Embodied consciousness became condensed to a pin-point that hung the poised axis of power: Asandir bridged the liminal threshold between the strictures of order and chaos.

The deft instant pa.s.sed. The adept sensed his auric field lighten, then spin away, while the etheric awareness mooring his spirit unreeled like dropped thread behind him. Then the lane beacon blazed into adamant brilliance. Now immersed in its current, the Sorcerer inducted the raw charge he needed to fuel his journey.

Amid her listening calm, the adept sensed the caught echo of Asandir's experience. Merged into the singing magnetics, his being became at one with the flow that guided the migrating birds, then the convection of winds raising the static charge for a storm front. He absorbed the cold hands of the desperate poor, gleaning the overlooked grain from the fields, then the silenced pounce of an owl, and the squeal of the mouse in its talons. He knew the pinched hunger of families in Dyshent, and the misery of clansmen serving in chains on the galleys snugged under a town breakwater. He was a caravan camped by a road, while oxen grazed under starlight; then the dissonance of crystallized water, warped out of true by the discharge from Scarpdale's torn grimward. The current there bespoke Sethvir's bright pain, holding the desolate span of what fast was becoming a rampaging breach: Asandir endured the horrific ache and pa.s.sed on by, as he must. Farther south, the ancient circle at Telmandir brought him the laughter of King Eldir's sons. Clan lodge-fires burning in Elkforest braided into the silent bleeding of trees cut down for charcoal at Deal. The Sorcerer felt the delvings of miners who broke rock for tin beneath Lithmere, and rolled as the surf, slamming the shingle at Earle; he was icy water, and the schooling of fish, then misted cloud, billowing under the new-risen moon.

Althain's lane beacon intensified as the Sorcerer drank in its cascading stream of wild energies. The change struck too fast: one instant the adept felt Asandir's essence, nestled into Athera's magnetics. Then the brazier flickered, divided, as the Sorcerer launched in departure. Cold blue as a star, the spark resteadied and blazed, a detached beacon behind him.

Asandir travelled the icy void without anchor. Into unshielded territory, endangered by questing wraiths, he dared not carry his rapport with the lane's flux. He fared outwards adrift, dropping all but the ephemeral memory of the clay sh.e.l.l left at Althain Tower.

The adept steadied her breathing and curbed her raced heart-beat. Apprehension would serve no purposeful good. For where the observer constrained to five senses might dimly sense hostile cold, and the emptiness of deep vacuum, the stream of the Sorcerer's unleashed presence would discern vistas beyond. Asandir would re-encounter himself, mirrored in the upper registers. Shifted into vibration and light, his trued self would be redefined: in music beyond hearing and colour beyond sight, he would rejoin the grand spectrum that sourced Ath's creation.

That siren call could unstring the mind. Even the self-aware spirit might run mad with desire to embrace the sweet ease of surrender. Against the thundering chord that was life, unveiled as exalted glory, Asandir had no more than spare will, and the hard-set choice of endurance. The dragons had bound him. The warp thread of his life had been precisely matched to the weft thread spun by their dreaming. Summoned with such clarity, his nature must answer. Irrevocably, fate had wedded his destiny to the cloth of Athera's existence. If he lost his grip, or let go of himself, there would be no route back, except through tormented insanity.

Braced for the course of a steadfast vigil, the adept tracked the tuned pulse of the Sorcerer's life chord and committed herself to patience . . .

An adamant presence hurled outwards across the vaulting dark of the deep, Asandir touched against the protective matrix laid down by his discorporate colleagues. The construct gave him the reference point to leap over the distance at speed. Spelled wardings rang like a cascade of tapped chimes as he answered the challenge and pa.s.sed, clean as a needle through silk.

Onwards, he pressed. The crystalline voices of stars braided song all about him. Ahead, if he reached, he could sense Kharadmon, weaving a convolute string of evasions. The inventive working strung a web of entanglements to delay the first influx of marauding free wraiths.

Asandir allowed that contest wide berth. Even the most shielded contact with his colleague invited the chance of disaster: if such an encounter drew glancing notice, conflict would be joined. The pack that nipped at Kharadmon's heels would turn, with the tenantless husk of the body at Althain posing an irresistible gambit. The tenuous tie between spirit and flesh would lead back to Athera and provide the ripe opening for hostile possession.

The field Sorcerer had no choice but to pa.s.s Kharadmon by and hold to his unswerving purpose. With the planet behind no more than an azure chip inset against velvet darkness, his reference became the whisper-thin trace of the trees, a remnant left by the defunct spell once created to call his colleague home from an ill-fated survey of Marak. That cold, icy world had succ.u.mbed and died, overrun by the wraith-riddled fogs that had also sourced the Mistwraith's destructive invasion. To the famished horde, cut off at South Gate, the rich life on Athera remained as a prize to be ravaged by relentless conquest.

Asandir made his way without disturbing the imprinted energies the old spell had scribed through the ethers. If he ranged too near, the wraiths already in progress and tracking might sense him. More than agile opponents, they could slip between time. To evade their keen senses, the Sorcerer upstepped the frequency of his being until he rode the carrier wave of harmonics, octaves above solid matter. Awareness without form, he sailed the vast deeps, whirled in the black flame of the untamed glory that existed before ordered creation.

Here lay his danger: streamed through the very essence of joy, cradled by power to absolve every grievance, Asandir knew a pure exaltation that acknowledged no pain and no boundaries. Marak's wraiths, Athera - the binding charge of the dragons - seemed dwindled to insignificance.

The ties that sustained vital flesh became both prison and leash, an enc.u.mbrance the self-aware spirit might snap as ident.i.ty thinned and faded.

For that thread to endure, the Sorcerer must renew his attention from moment to moment. The very act denounced his full Name. Each reaffirmation cut like a betrayal as, steadfast, he refuted the core of all knowing that cherished his greater existence. Asandir suffered a hunger of spirit that transcended all cares of the flesh. Beguiled, then claimed by the might of Ath's mysteries, he drifted, while a whisper arose to sustain him.