The Ships of Merior. Janny Wurts

me,’ Elaira said, relieved as the pattern’s cruel quandary erased at last from the embers.

      She blotted streaming cheeks on her sleeve, and so missed Lirenda’s transition from trance to waking consciousness. A jealous, unguarded expression crossed the First Senior’s face, and a glare like distilled venom drilled through the younger woman’s back.

      The Prime watched with hooded eyes as her chosen successor masked the lapse. Grim as steel, she held to her purpose. ‘You were called to serve, initiate Elaira. Since we now know the conflict seeded by the Mistwraith will afflict more than one generation, you are asked to submit your crystal for enhancement. You won’t be forced. Consider carefully. The fate of outliving your peers is not always happy or desirable.’

      Lirenda maintained an elegant, stiff silence. Only the hands pinched in fists beneath her sleeves expressed her depths of resentment, that a privilege reserved for proven seniors was being offered to a girl who flaunted propriety.

      Rough-edged as a hoyden by comparison, Elaira confronted the emaciated crone in her bulwark of robes and the ice-point shimmer of her diamonds. Morriel’s life had extended well past a thousand years; centuries reckoned for in joints worn eggshell thin, and flesh racked and drawn to a husk of brittle fibres by powerful spells of preservation. Unlike the Fellowship of Seven, whose direct grasp of grand conjury could engender lengthened life in concert with physical law, Koriani methods were limited to energy resonance enhanced by a power crystal’s lattice.

      There is pain, at first,’ Morriel continued, ‘but only until the body reaches primary equilibrium with the stay-spells. After the first six months, degenerative ageing is reversed until well past seven hundred years. Since Davien’s mark holds influence for only five centuries, you need not live on to endure the afflictions of secondary interference.’

      Surrounded by the chipped majesty of the initiates’ ancient carvings, never so aware of the fall of clear sunlight, or the chirp of nesting martens in the cornices outside, Elaira hugged her arms across her breast. The warning of her Prime and the antipathy behind Lirenda’s cool façade lost all impact before trepidation from another source.

      Once in dusk by the seaside, a Fellowship sorcerer had offered her counsel in secret. ‘I was sent to you,’ Traithe had said, ‘because an augury showed the Warden of Althain that, for good or ill, you’re the one spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best. Should your Master of Shadow fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster.’

      There was no decision to be made, Elaira understood in bitter calm; and so her voice did not shake as she said, ‘I accept the bidding of my Prime.’

      Silk rustled. A breath of eddied lavender twined on the air as Morriel inclined her head. ‘So be it. Surrender your jewel for attunement.’ A wrist like bundled withies lifted from her lap, its claw-skinny hand cupped to grasp.

      Elaira freed a clear quartz pendant strung on braided chain like a teardrop frozen in mid-fall. Small-boned and light-footed and trained to dissemble as a pickpocket, she displayed a courage that embarrassed as the jewel changed grasp. A charged understanding passed between the crone and the young woman who consented to a fate that might ruin her.

      Then Elaira’s lips bent into an insolent smile. ‘I wish this course of change, as well.’

      ‘The more fool you,’ snapped the Prime. ‘You have virtues, but wisdom isn’t one of them.’ She snatched the relinquished chain and jewel to her chest and said in querulous, point blank demand, ‘Tell me. Where do you suppose the Shadow Master is hiding?’

      Shocked and stonily defensive, Elaira had no choice but to answer. ‘Where is Lysaer?’

      Lirenda bridled in affront.

      But Morriel judged the query was not impertinence. ‘Tysan’s prince is marching for Erdane to claim his right to Avenor’s charter.’

      Elaira’s stillness turned brittle. In that same forbidden meeting, Traithe had assured her that obedience to her Prime would cause no additional threat to Arithon. Against her deepest inclination, but bound by the perilous nature of her Koriani vows, she answered, ‘Then look for the Shadow Master in any town that borders the eastern sea. He’ll be found, I should guess, as far from Avenor as the confines of dry land will allow.’

      ‘A sensible deduction. At solstice, we shall scry the seventh lane and test the truth of your theory.’ Worn from the interview, Morriel flicked a terse finger in dismissal.

      ‘You too,’ the Prime rapped to Lirenda, who lingered, poised to argue further over Elaira’s longevity privileges. Distressed by an emerging flaw in her First Senior’s character no longer too slight to ignore, Morriel tugged her robes around the thin knobs of her knees. I would meditate for an hour undisturbed.’

      Lirenda curtseyed and swept out on Elaira’s heels, the swish of her silk sending draughts shimmering across the brazier’s live coals.

      Alone with disgruntled thoughts, the Koriani Prime tightened pallid lips. She lacked the time to wait for a more qualified heir; if the current First Senior had flaws needing discipline, she possessed an extraordinary talent. In truth, Morriel conceded, the temptation in this case was not slight. Stamped bright in recall, she held every angle and line and counter-swept curve that configured the s’Ffalenn prince’s aura pattern.

      The strength in the man was frightening.

      Were she not old, and aching, and daily yearning the release of natural death, she might have wept as Elaira had.

      Instead her frail fingers clenched over the spell crystal surrendered to her in forced trust. Her eyes gleamed baleful as arctic night as she muttered, ‘Curse you, son of s’Ffalenn.’

      If by his mere existence Arithon of Rathain came to corrupt more than Elaira’s impulsive heart; if his character upset the discipline of the First Senior chosen to be groomed as prime successor, Morriel vowed by the cold fire in her joints that she would see him suffer in full measure for her misery.

      Should Lirenda fall short in her training, should she fail to survive the trials of Koriani primacy, the added century Morriel must cling to breathing life to select and mould another candidate yawned frightfully cruel and dark.

       Farings

      While the trees unfold lush canopies of leaves, Lysaer s’Ilessid makes his penniless entrance into the city of Erdane; and as the city’s reigning mayor jettisons fixed policy to host a guest of royal birth, Lord Diegan is the sole party unsurprised to learn that although the weaponless mercenaries in the prince’s train have gone three weeks without pay, their loyalty remains Unshaken…

      In the burgeoning warmth of southern latitude, a hand-picked circle of Koriani Seniors leaves Forthmark on an overland journey; by command of Morriel Prime, who rides with them swathed under quilts in her palanquin, their intent bends toward the solstice yet to come, when another scrying will seek yet again to unmask the elusive Master of Shadow …

      Seated in the heart of Alestron’s inner citadel, the Fellowship sorcerer Asandir weighs the claim of the duke’s distraught seneschal, that the lord of the city and his brothers are absent to arrange a betrothal; and though a sweep of the grounds reveals no trace of foundries, nor proscribed treatises on black powder, the official is hedging around the hard fact that the armoury walls bear recent traces of an earth witch’s marks of concealment…

       V. MASQUE

      The door to Halliron’s attic chamber slammed with a gusto that rattled frame and hinges, but failed to disrupt the dancing play of arpeggios through an exercise in descending sevenths. The notes a seamless cascade beneath his fingers, Medlir raised his eyebrows at Dakar, tempestuously returned from the public baths with his nose buffed apple red. His clothing still hung half-unlaced, his hair was a wet, draggled fringe, and a virulent reek