The Ships of Merior Read Online Free Page B

into hiding.
    Having met Lysaer s’Ilessid only briefly, Maenalle still sighed in regret for a gifted statesman’s skills twisted awry by Desh-thiere’s curse. Through the course of just one past visit, her most reticent scouts had warmed totheir prince enough to sorrow rather than rage over his treacherous alliance with town enemies. As for Arithon of Rathain, he was mage-trained: secretive, powerfully clever, and too fiendishly innovative to crumple before whatever odds Lysaer would raise against him.
    ‘Where is your liege?’ Maenalle asked. ‘Does Arithon know his adversary now looks to claim ancestral lands in Tysan?’
    Because her eyes were averted, only Tashan saw the exasperated look that flashed between the earl and his war captain. To Jieret’s staunch credit, he found courage to answer her directly. ‘We came to give warning. Of Arithon’s intent, we’ve no clue. When he left us, he made his will plain. He would not have his presence become a target to encourage the geas that drives him and Lysaer to war.’
    Still bluntly irked over a clash of wills fully five years gone, Caolle knotted ham fists on the trestle top. ‘We haven’t seen or heard from our liege since the rite sung over our war dead. Ath knows where he is. His Grace himself won’t deign to send word.’
    Which explained the hardness behind Jieret’s focused maturity, Maenalle concluded in silent pain. To him alone had fallen the task of guarding his people from Etarra’s seasonal purge by headhunters. The woman in her ached for her grandson, who might come to taste the same griefs.
    If Lysaer won title to Avenor, the rift engendered by Desh-thiere’s ills, that had sundered Rathain and sparked old hates to furious bloodshed, must inevitably sweep into Tysan.
    ‘Our clans will prepare for the worst,’ Maenalle concluded in bitterness. She arose, let the wrung parchment fall on the tabletop, then offered the beleaguered young earl the courtesy due to an equal, for whether he had gained the privilege of swearing fealty to a lawfully sanctioned prince, like her, he was
caithdein
to a realmwithout a king. His liege lord did not back him; by himself, Jieret had shouldered the risk, had left Rathain’s shores with the fourteen companions who were his last surviving peers to bring word of Lysaer’s false intent.
    For all her sixty years, Maenalle felt tired and disheartened; beaten down with sorrow enough to contemplate what this red-bearded stripling would not, even for grief since the slaughter of his family: break down and give way to hatred, abandon himself to vindictive killing.
    ‘You don’t resent your prince for going,’ she found herself saying in unabashed awe. Tashan turned around to stare at her, while Caolle looked on, nonplussed.
    Their reactions passed unheeded as Jieret gave her the first true smile she had seen. ‘I admire Arithon, much as my father did, though my line’s gift of Sight warned us both that my family would die in royal service.’
    ‘I met your liege once,’ Maenalle admitted. ‘Though I never saw him work shadows or magecraft, Ath grant me grace, I wish never to cross wits with him again.’
    Rueful in grim understanding, Jieret said, ‘Never mind Ath. If my liege has his way, you probably won’t. I believe he finds contentment in obscurity.’
    Neither cynical Caolle nor Tysan’s lady steward wasted breath to belabour the obvious: that Prince Lysaer’s public presence and insidious charisma must eventually come to prevail. Arithon of Rathain would awaken one day, else be battered from his complaisance.
Grant
    Talith, sister to Etarra’s Lord Commander of the Guard, could recall when early autumn had filled the city with the smell of ripe apples. Hauled in on the farm-wains that toiled up the winding roads through the passes, the fruit had been unloaded in piles on burlap in the raucous expanse of the markets. In imitation of the pranks of older gallants, bored, rich young boys once delighted