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Man's doings and causes outside came to seem a tawdry, overdressed dream,
played out in gusty motion and senseless noise.
Exotic birds in rainbow plumage perched in the alders, nestled shoulder to
shoulder with hawks and ocean shearwaters. They did not fly at the prince's
approach, but watched him, bright eyed in fey wisdom.
"Where are the priests?" Lysaer whispered.
The woman beside him laughed, mellifluous as the water's voice, falling.
"We have no priests, no priestesses. That would imply a hierarchy where
Ath's law bids none to exist. You come as a man, and as earth's balance
dictates, the initiate who speaks will be female."
"I need no one's counsel." Lysaer rested his raised foot on the rim of the
rock pool. Beneath his braced stance, rerendered in bled colors by the
half-light, his reflection stared back at him, shattered as droplets rained
down in random melody and scattered the illusion of his presence.
Unable to feel alarmed, lost beyond reach of concern for that lack, the prince
addressed his purpose. "I came here to seek two others in your care, an
exiled guard captain named Tharrick and the widow, Mistress
Jinesse, from Merior. By the gate you told me I might see them."
"So you might." The lilted words were patience, not promise.
Lysaer broke his regard on the pool and stared at the porcelain-still figure
beside him. She waited for him to give up something. The feeling pressed
through his quietude with the force of solid touch or the chill of a
storm-soaked shirt.
His hands were empty. The magnificence of this forest reduced his plan for a
bribe to the basest form of insult.
Lysaer regarded the white mystic in all her dusky-skinned beauty, and could
not step back as he became watched in turn by a regard taintless silver as new
rain.
An unprincely need stole through him to explain himself.
The diplomat's training dunned into him since childhood failed to restore his
focus, but instead sliced his mind into unmanageable disarray. One fragment
insisted his concern stemmed from desire to protect the widow's twins from
corruption. Another, unruly and traitorous, seized control: and that one
urged answer first.
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"The man, Tharrick, knows more than he's saying of my enemy's intentions, and
the woman's part is crucial. She has no choice but to follow her children.
When she does, she'll guide the way for my war host." Against the plinked cry
of springwater, over the feathered rustles as the birds ruffled and stared,
the statement rang loud as a shout.
Ever proud of his grip on discretion, Lysaer shrank in dismay, in
embarrassment; then, as the grasping manipulation in his words struck home, in
disgraced and annihilating shame.
He stared at the face of Ath's initiate, appalled.
Yet her ebon brows remained smoothed beyond censure.
She said, "The man and the woman you mention are guests here.
They have their own will by Ath's law, and they desire not to be used so."
Lysaer bit back impatience. He cupped his temples, strove to reconcile his
splintered self-unity and banish the mad play of hallucination.
But the trickle of the fountain and the soft, fluting calls of the songbirds
unraveled his intent to distraction.
Brazen and sharp, he was speaking again, this time from the half that was
prince. "Tharrick and Jinesse have been misled, even dangerously beguiled.
For the good of all people, I must hunt down the sorcerer who corrupted them."
The adept answered, brisk, "To take his life!"
Lysaer felt hurled off center once again, spun round and dizzied until he
wanted to crack into crazed laughter. But only hot tears wet his cheeks. He
clawed back to balance, but nothing was the same. By his elbow, the birds
flapped alarmed wings and flew; the hare by his boot was already gone. The
leopard, now alert and sprung to her feet, watched him with a huntress's
glare, her verdigris eyes open and round as a pair of weathered copper coins.
The initiate's edged speech had not upset the beasts from their peace;
unsettled by chills, Lysaer understood that his refocused presence had
triggered their sudden alarm.
He wished all at once to straighten, to walk, to leave. As he moved, the pool
recaptured his gaze, cast a veil of magnetic attraction.
Too late, he realized a trap had closed over him.
The stilled peace of the trees pressed him into a deep well of lassitude.
At his side, the woman turned back her white hood. Her loosened hair gleamed
in the pale, lucent twilight like ripples of dark-dyed silk.
Her eyes were moonstone. Her lips framed with the voice of Dharkaron
Avenger, or the wheels of his Chariot as they turned on a thundering charge to
claim the world's due redress.
"Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn is no enemy of yours.
Lysaer felt a blistering cry rip from the depths of his throat.
He felt strong, whole, and gloriously clear minded. "Arithon
s'Ffalenn would as soon see me dead, just as I would kill him.
If you doubt his intent, he has toyed with you."
"Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn is no enemy of yours, " the lady repeated.
She stood tall before him. Her porcelain finger scribed a seal in white fire
upon the air.
The flux of sudden light splintered between mind and spirit.
Riven by that rushing tide of power, Lysaer flung back, tripped on the
rimrock, and found himself inexplicably turned around. Both hands splashed to
the wrists in icy water. He gasped from the wet and the shock. Dizzied by
the sensation of split personality, laced by pain that skinned through to his
bones, he was embattled by irreconcilable truths: of children trained to slit
the throats of wounded men, and
Arithon s'Ffalenn wholly innocent of the command that had sent them forth to
cause bloodshed. Then the second, bleakly damning, of himself with his
s'llessid gift of justice bent awry by the usage and possession of
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Desh-thiere's wraith.
Lysaer screamed aloud in split voices. "Ath and Dharkaron's pity on me!
The deaths at Tai Quorin were none of my choosing." But surcease was denied
him. In the searing, deep mirror of the initiate's regard, amid the terrible
mystery of the glade, he observed his past deeds recast in a mold that
condemned him. In turn, he beheld Arithon forced to the unwilling role of
killer.
The oddly skewed vision refused to relent: Lysaer saw himself, and wept for
the deaths of clan wives and children brought through his given gift of light;
and he saw himself in the stern role of prince, deluded by duty to enact an
execution for an ignorant, blind claim of just cause.
Lysaer howled as the awful dichotomy ran him through like snapped glass,
sharpened by razor-edged conscience.
"Who am I?" he cried to his tormentor, who was not mortal flesh, but steel
which cut to lay him bare.
The adept's voice in answer was metal just quenched from the forge fire.
"Step back. Step into the pool. The spring will cleanse you.
Ath's mercy will allow you forgiveness."
The half of him that wept heard a haven in her words, and begged beyond pride
for such release. The half of him that was prince saw no cleansing and no
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