I.

       Retribution

      Arithon s’Ffalenn, called Master of Shadow! For the sake of your crimes against our fair city of Jaelot, your spirit shall be delivered by sword and by fire to your rightful hour of death…

      – Mayor of Jaelot, decree of execution

      Third Age Year 5669

      The storm settled over the Eltair coast just after the advent of nightfall. Like the worst winter gales, it stole in on cat feet. The fitful, fine sleet dusting over sere landscape changed on a breath into muffling snow as the temperature plunged below freezing. The moment caught Arithon s’Ffalenn, last living Prince of Rathain and birth-born Master of Shadow, crouched in the iced brush of a hedgerow.

      Each labored breath burned his lungs like cold fire. His sprint was cut short, though the city of Jaelot’s stone walls lay scarcely a bowshot behind him. A skulking fugitive hard-pressed by enemies who hunted by sword and by spellcraft, he shot a concerned glance sidewards as Fionn Areth folded, gasping, beside him. The young man had spent the dregs of his strength.

      Even the threat of relentless pursuit could not stave off stark necessity: the goatherd just snatched from death on the scaffold could run no farther without pause for recovery.

      ‘Rest,’ whispered Arithon, as winded himself. ‘For a moment. No more.’

      Fionn Areth’s clipped nod showed resentment, not gratitude.

      Yet no moment could be spared to treat with the young man’s inimically misguided loyalties. Enemies hounded their backs without respite. Koriani seeresses would be tracking with spelled snares. If the mayor’s armed guardsmen from Jaelot prevailed first, the pair would be slaughtered on the run.

      ‘They’ll find us.’ Fionn Areth cast a harrowed glance over his shoulder. His chilled hand tightened on his sword grip as he noticed the patrol sweeping the high crenels of the battlements. The flutter of their pine brands speared rays of light through the thickening snowfall. Arithon measured their movement, intent. The alarm bells stayed mute. No outcry arose from the gatehouse. Careful to mask his own tension, he said, ‘Bide easy. The mayor’s guards can’t know we’ve slipped through the walls unless the Koriathain decide to inform them.’

      Nor would the senior enchantress, Lirenda, be anxious to disseminate word of her failure. Since her towering arrogance had granted her quarry the opening to escape, she would be loath to approach her male allies. Once again, her order had bungled their promise to entrap the Master of Shadow.

      Left raw by the price he had paid to win back his threatened autonomy, Arithon closed with dry irony, ‘From stung pride, I expect the witches will try to recoup their blunder in secret. That’s to our advantage. Thick snowfall should foil their scryers and hide us, at least for a little while.’

      Fionn Areth returned a poisonous glower from a face that, feature for feature, was a mirror image of the Shadow Master’s. Having narrowly missed execution and burning for the crimes of his look-alike nemesis, he still suffered the morning’s shock of discovery, that his appearance had been fashioned by the meddling design of Koriani spellcraft. The cruel fact chafed, that he had been used as unwitting, live bait in their conspiracy to ensnare the unprincipled killer beside him.

      The betrayal stung yet. ‘Never mind witches,’ he gasped in spat venom to the Spinner of Darkness. ‘The Alliance won’t rest until you’ve been dismembered and burned to serve justice.’