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"Why care?" Dakar broke in. "Talith was insufferably arrogant. She flaunted her looks outright to manipulate an opening for intrigue." To the Fellowship spirit which arrowed above the brigantine's masthead, he added, "I watched the whole thing. Arithon kept his distance from the lady as though she were fiend plagued and venomous!" "So he did," Kharadmon agreed. Wind screamed through stays, and the brigantine slammed smoking through another swell. A green swirl of waters slapped across her rails, to drain in throaty gurgles through her scuppers. "Despite that care, Talith came to recognize Arithon's compassion. She was too proud to play false with her husband. And she believed Lysaer's judgment was not impaired. Desh-thiere's curse showed her the error of her trust, but too late." "Her marriage is ruined," Arithon concluded in an anguish that begged against hope for contradiction. Kharadmon was not wont to soften the impact of cause and effect. "Lysaer will never lie with her again. He'll honor her position and not flaunt a mistress. But his liaison with his wife until the day of her death will be kept to a state formality." "He'd put her aside?" Incredulous, Dakar shoved up straight. The Khetienn rolled. Braced through a particularly virulent dousing, he became torn into conflicted interests by Arithon's precipitous departure. "Believe it," Kharadmon finished. "The lady came back having seen too much. The marred gift of s'llessid justice won't let Lysaer abide the ambiguity." Ice-cold, shivering in suspicion that rang clear through to his bones, Dakar laced stubborn, red fingers over his streaming knees. Page 164 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Fellowship Sorcerers were ever subtle players. The distinct possibility could not be ignored, that Kharadmon might play his sympathies against Lysaer for a purpose; particularly if Sethvir sensed any echo that he harbored a secret augury on Arithon's life. Dakar lacked the straight courage to confront the matter outright; and at an indeterminate point inside the next hour Kharadmon left the Khetienn to make her way south on the world's winds. The seamen changed watch at nightfall before the Mad Prophet caught the startling anomaly: Arithon had made no other appearance on the brigantine's deck since his disjointed inquiry after the fate of Princess Talith. The weather had eased with the sunset. Khetienn sailed large, rocking to a fair weather swell. Her course bent due south, and wind off her quarter flapped the royal pennon no one had troubled to run down from the masthead. A game of dice was under way in the galley; the whoop of a winner and the pound of a fist against wood drummed up from the trestle below decks. Topside, sails, and rigging carved the starry sky in neat order; too neat, the Mad Prophet surmised. As if the mate on watch had tidied the Khetienn's lines and spars in the expectation no adjustments would be asked. "Himself went below," the quartermaster answered in laconic response to Dakar's concern. "Said, let him bide. He didn't want to know if the wind changed. Steward was turned off, also. No food and no service before morning." Dakar's pulse quickened in alarm. Adamant as Arithon could be when he desired solitude, he was an irreproachable captain. Never before had he failed to oversee every nuance of sail trim and course. His slackened attentiveness now made no sense, not when the Khetienn was engaged in a race to reach Shand ahead of Lysaer's galley. "Fiends," swore the quartermaster, his brow creased with disbelief for the determined set to Dakar's stance. "Oh man, you're not going down after him. The fool who tries his temper, I swear on my hindparts, is fair asking' to get the gizzard knifed out o' him." But like the misfortunate princess, Dakar had been too far and seen too much. From an altered perspective he scarcely knew for his own, he lashed out at the helmsman in anger. "Did you never think? Arithon's not indestructible, however hard he tries to act the part. He's just been told another friend passed the Wheel. The upset can't help but aggrieve him." The staid old quartermaster looked wary, his eyes knurled in wrinkles like walnuts. "True or not," he allowed, "I'd rather you twist the snake's tail than me." Dakar returned an epithet, not cheered by the thought that for once in his born life, Asandir would have praised him. "I've been a dimwit since the second I drew breath." Still grousing under his breath in sad misery, he squeezed his girth down the companionway. "Even a dog has the good sense to know when it's too old and simple to change." The stemcastle door lay ahead, an unlit square of dark varnish. Dakar weighed his outright cowardice against his unspeakable fear; and terror won. He stepped forward, entered, and humbled against the heave of the vessel down the narrow corridor to the captain's quarters. His knock went unanswered. The door, unsurprisingly, proved locked. "Open," snapped Dakar, out of tolerance with unease. "if you don't, so help me, Arithon, I'm going to break the latch. And not by neat sorcery, either." No sound came from the far side. To a half-snarled oath, then a rushed prayer Page 165 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html to Ath, the Mad Prophet lowered his chin for a bull's charge, prepared to crash his shoulder against the wood. The latch tripped and the panel whipped open to reveal Arithon in his shirtsleeves. "I asked not to be troubled," he said in ruthless annoyance. "The quartermaster warned you. Is this loyalty, Dakar? Or, Sithaer forbid, an attempt to shepherd my conscience?" "None of those." Dakar straightened up, dusky as a plum. A self-control he never knew he possessed held him steady as he raked his attention over the prince who opposed him. The clothing and hair, faintly disheveled, and green eyes acute in their focus gave him scant grounds for reassurance. He planted himself amid the opened doorway in outright, stubborn intent. "By all means," cried Arithon in explosive antagonism. "If you're going to make an occasion of my mistakes, you might as well come inside. The whole blighted crew doesn't need to share in the happy exhibition." As the Shadow Master cleared the passage, Dakar saw beyond to the damning array of items laid out in the spill of the lamp on the chart table. "You were going to break in," Arithon said by way of rough defense for the small stone pipe, and the opened cap of a canister whose spice-scented contents snapped Dakar's foreboding into dread. "Ath's own infinite mercy!" The Mad Prophet spun to face down the Prince of Rathain, unmindful of temper, uncaring how he meddled, this once in his life a Fellowship spellbinder upbraiding a fellow mage for sheer idiocy. "What were you thinking to do? You can't try an augury under influence of tienelle. You've blinded your talent! The poisons in that herb will run their course beyond control. If the toxins don't land you stone dead, you'll end up crippled or witless." "That can be argued," Arithon said, his fury burned down to rankling sarcasm as he twisted the key in the lock. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |