Exchange

      Winter Solstice 5649

      The explosive surge of spell-turned forces just used to restore Lysaer to Avenor subsided from the focus beneath Althain Tower. Where a prince’s mortal senses had lately discerned but rough stone and a mood of pervasive sorrow, for lingering minutes while the lane flux subsided, the guarding wards left laced through the rock stood roused in all of their splendor. A mind attuned to Paravian mysteries could discern their imprint. The fine energies twined into substance like hazed water, everlastingly falling: a lightning-laced lattice of pattern came sheathed in a beauty fit to draw spirit from flesh.

      While the fitted block walls of the citadel ceased their sympathetic vibration, the visiting adept of Ath’s Brotherhood paused just outside the door to the King’s Chamber. Her willowy build and white robes made her form appear cased in brightness against the grimed arch of the stair vault.

      Or perhaps the effect arose from the spirit aura thrown off by initiates of her discipline when they chose to walk in dim places. Few in Athera were empowered to keep pace with the mysteries of Ath’s Brotherhood.

      One such confronted her now, a Sorcerer who, over thousands of years, had been other things in his past.

      He leaned on the massive, iron-strapped door in what seemed a deranged fit of woolgathering. His features were glazed in the glow of the candles. Less susceptible than stone to the fluxes of grand conjury, wax-fed flame only danced to the drafts, as winter’s cold swirled and snatched at the shutters, and moaned through the chinks in old masonry.

      The adept surveyed Althain’s Warden with her tuned awareness. Her shapely hands stayed clasped beneath her embroidered cuffs; threadwork of gold and silver which at times glinted back something more than commonplace reflection. The heavier sconces, flaming in iron brackets on the landing, scrawled moving shadow across her Fellowship subject, masked in his disarming vagaries.

      Sethvir’s eyes alone showed a mind like surgical steel swathed in misleading burlap. Beneath the spiked tufts of white brows, his gaze remained bleak and trackless as ice on the northern flank of a snowdrift.

      The adept knew a sudden, deep stab of uneasiness, as if a wet leaf had brushed scraping tracks down her spine. “Never doubt,” she urged, her dusky chin lifted under the shelf of her hood. “Your Fellowship chose right and fitting action with regard to Lysaer s’Ilessid.”

      Sethvir’s seamed knuckles tightened on the doorframe. “Right or not, his expulsion was our forced duty.”

      Evasive words, to mask chains of happenstance that would come to shape Athera’s future. Ath’s adept matched his challenge, unwavering in her regard. Drafts stirred the clogged fleece of the Sorcerer’s beard and combed unseen over sinews and flesh he often forgot he possessed, so many years had his consciousness ridden the intricate tides of the earth link. Against flooding warmth and pale paneling, Althain’s Warden seemed an emaciated tree, braced and shaped by relentless storms.

      The adept laid slim, olive fingers on his sleeve. “Why are you troubled? Should we fear for one man’s fate, do you think? The judgment of the Paravians is sourced in Ath’s wisdom. They won’t err in behalf of your prince.”

      By their nature, indeed, they could not. Sethvir knew best of any. His sustained, rooted patience was the unflinching remorse of a conscience chained still through long years and hard-fought experience. Before such burdensome memories as his, no mere touch in kindness could comfort. Althain’s Warden therefore yielded nothing, his face clamped to folds like burled cypress.

      The adept firmed her grasp, insistent. “Lysaer shall receive his redemption from wrong.”

      “And is his choice wrong?” Sethvir asked. No kindness could spare him the lacerating vision imposed through the channels of the earth link. Stamped into his awareness, passed on through her contact, the adept shared the keening, hot surge of a crowd whipped on to devotion in the far-distant plaza at Avenor.

      “What’s left to weigh?” Unperturbed, she let Althain’s Warden share the upset Lysaer’s will had once imposed upon the sacred grove in her brotherhood’s hostel near Shaddorn. “This prince is both willful and flawed.”

      Outside, a blast of north wind hurled sand like gritted smoke against the tower. As if flesh were scoured by the sting of each grain, Sethvir shook his head. “Lysaer is terrified beyond life to abandon his care for the innocent.”

      “Never mind they need none of his help!” The adept spilled a silvery, sharp laugh. “Athera’s folk can find their salvation very well. They need no misfit savior playing on their fears to shore up a creed reft of spirit.” Still probing, she gave Althain’s Warden her most bracing pity. “Stay your grief in this hour, you waste anguish on the wrong victim. While Ath’s order becomes maligned by false truth, and the masses are fired to worship your Prince of the Light, rather, Arithon s’Ffalenn becomes the spirit in mortal danger of corruption.”

      “Then you see very well.” Sethvir disengaged his arm. “You must know our Fellowship dreads that beyond anything.” For an instant, the wells of his eyes seemed rinsed blank, both shield and mirror against her prying concern. “You name just one ugly crux out of many. Each of my doubts is well-founded.” He covered her young, woman’s fingers with a palm that had worn bloodstains before those of ink, and too much of both for lasting quietude. The strength which led her to the head of the stair was anything but an old man’s.

      She protested his courtesy as unnecessary.

      “As you wish.” Sethvir let her go. While the tormented flames in the sconces rinsed his face, Ath’s adept read its mapwork of lines and snatched insight: Althain’s Warden regretted a hope kept too fiercely.

      Swift in riposte, his forthright, sad smile foiled her sympathy. “Your Brotherhood can never serve as priests.”

      The lady gave way, then, no longer able to match that wise gaze. Shaken, not cowed, she veiled her distress in the screening shadow of her hood. “For all good intent, if we tried, we would seed the very rift in Ath’s continuity that Lysaer s’Ilessid shall create through selfish error.”

      Brotherhood adepts could not intervene in affairs of kingdoms or men. Nor did their high initiates leave their hostels to teach or draw in new acolytes. They dared not set forth to preach, even against Lysaer’s threat of false faith, which could raise the sure power to scatter them. Theirs was not, and never could be, a guide to established religion. Seekers came to them to find inspiration; as they chose, they might stay and take the path to life’s deeper mystery.

      Ath’s adepts held to no doctrine and no creed. They kept their way clear, their channel to truth unclouded by the arrogance of moralizing fools, to misinterpret, or by the greedy who corrupted to exploit. The Paravians who had been their example were departed, and with them went the world’s pure connection to the miracle of the prime source.

      “We cannot let the knowledge we guard fall prey,