Prince of Time Page 3

  From the mage’s cauldron came the beasts and the blade—and the binding love of a thief for the desert-born maid.

  Chapter 1

  The White Palace

  Deseillign Waste

  Avallyn Le Severn walked the length of the palace corridor alone, her strides smooth and sure, her boots silent on the marble floor—the tread of a desert walker. A faint flush warmed her cheeks beneath her vision visor, a damnable inconvenience she needed to remedy before facing the tribune. All other signs of her inner turmoil were hidden beneath a layer of carefully contrived calm that two days of travel over the trackless Waste had not shaken.

  She had been summoned.

  She had come.

  And now it would begin.

  A sere wind blew through the open windows on each side of the hall, bringing with it the withering heat of the day. Sand moved with every breath of air, drifting over the sills and spilling onto the floor, a fallow flow from the endless Sand Sea. Someday the dunes would engulf the White Palace and there would be nothing but sand from the Dragon’s Mouth to the Old Dominion. But for now, the sweepers would come. For now, her concerns lay elsewhere.

  The color in her cheeks deepened, yet her stride did not falter.

  He was here, as sworn by the monk from Sonnpur-Dzon.

  He had been found, in this time, on this world. Her prince.

  The years of waiting were over. The destiny for which she’d been born would now begin to unfold in all its terror and glory with him by her side, the one for whom she had waited—the prince of the Fata Ranc Le, the Red Book of Doom. In another life he had written his fate upon the pages of the scarlet-bound book with the touch of his hand, and so had bound himself to her.

  Sweet Mother, she had waited. Waited in despair that he would never come, and in fear that he would. She’d scarce believed it when the monk had confessed to letting him walk out of the Sonnpur-Dzon monastery three months ago without so much as a by-your-leave. Ten thousand years he had been in the coming, and the monks had lost him in a matter of minutes.

  A mendicant, the monk had called him, a wandering brother who had come to the monastery to pray and meditate. He had revealed himself on a new moon night in the Sanctuary of Demons, a golden dragon grasped in his right hand and a blazing sword in his left, a warrior as the Book had foretold. He’d disappeared in a whirl of blue fire, walking off the monastery’s great wall into the night sky—and the monks had let him. The next morning no body had been found, only the prince’s tracks in the snow where he had landed with celestial grace.

  The powers of a mage, the heart of a warrior, and the courage of a saint. So it had been written of the prince, and so it was. Thank the gods, she thought. They would need all three to survive their fated journey.

  The Prince of Time.

  A thrill of excitement edged with fear sliced through her, threatening the thin veneer of her composure. He’d traveled far, a time-rider from a primitive, barbaric age. Would he be a danger, she wondered, this warrior-saint from out of the past? History was littered with destruction wrought in the name of saviors. Would the prince of the Fata be such a peril? And if he was, would her course be changed?

  No, she vowed. The fiercer and more barbaric, the better. Only the Prince of Doom, as some called him, would have a chance of surviving their destination, and only the mightiest warrior would have even half a chance of coming back from it alive.

  Shadana, she sent up a fervent prayer. Let him be all that is written and more. No matter how fierce, her will would tame him to the deed. The duty they shared would bring him to his destiny.

  The entrance to the Court of the Ilmarryn loomed in front of her, white marble columns rising up out of the shadows on either side of a towering stone door, and for the first time since reaching the palace, Avallyn tempered her steps with caution, slowing her pace. Fey creatures of the tylwyth teg, the Ilmarryn were not to be trifled with, not even by a priestess of the old line.

  At the door made from two great slabs of stone quarried from the caverns beneath the White Palace, she stopped and lifted her gaze. Names flowed down the granite panels, delicately chiseled letters run through with an arborescent crackling of rose quartz, the ancient lineage of the sylvan Ilmarryn traced back through the Prydion Age. Near the middle were names echoed in her own ancestry, Llynya of the Yr Is-ddwfn and Mychael ab Arawn, a lord of Merioneth.

  Standing quietly, she used a novice’s trick to school her breath. There was no advantage to her in allowing the tribune to see her excitement, and a distinct disadvantage to her if they sensed her unease. The tribune and their force of Sha-shakrieg Night Watchers were a means to an end, her end, and she would not have her desires or her weaknesses turned against her.

  She moved her gaze over the gray doors once more. Beaded steel bars circled round with bands of iron had been fashioned into massive handles that ran the length of the granite panels, a testament to all who would enter: Those inside feared naught on earth.

  Neither did she.

  She stepped forward, onto the tile directly in front of the doors, and they swung inward. A rich scent rushed out to meet her, cutting through the barren dryness of the desert and enveloping her in the smells of fresh leaves and bitter tannins, in the sweet redolence of the flowers and plants thriving in the glass-domed forest, the Lost Forest of the Waste. ’Twas here where her heart was, in the woodland glades and meadows, not in the desert where she’d been born.

  Lushly overgrown, the Court of the Ilmarryn lay at the heart of the White Palace, the last bastion of power overlooking the Sand Sea. Sweeping up from the palace walls, the dome arced high over the trees, a winding curve of pale green glass seven miles wide and fourteen miles long, a marvel of twisted steel struts and sun-struck expanses of glazing held aloft by Ilmarryn magic. Catwalks hung suspended from the internal scaffolding, and around and through the structures, both above and below, the flora flourished, ivy covering the walls and twining upward into the canopy, beech trees dappling the forest paths with shadows, oaks with over a thousand years of growth standing guard in groves throughout the wood. Coppices of alder, birch, and pine met and blended with hawthorn, elm, yew, and hazel within the confines of the great dome, the terrain that held them as varied as the species it harbored. Ferns abounded, unfurling over rocky streams and freshets and gracing the waterfalls whose music filled the Court.

  Avallyn chose a dirt path along the River Alduin, whose waters rippled over a rocky streambed, following a miles-long course before cascading into the caverns below the Court and joining the River Bredd in a place called Dripshank Well. Avallyn had dared the rapids of the Alduin’s falls more than once in her youth whenever she’d visited the White Palace. The river still beckoned, for far beneath the rivers’ confluence in Dripshank lay the remnant pools of a primordial sea, Mor Sarff. And in the deepest, darkest pool lay the nest of the Merioneth dragons, Dragonmere, with the mighty serpents themselves held captive there through the millennia by the advance of the desert and the freezing of the polar seas. Their power flowed through the White Palace as surely as the sands and Ilmarryn magic, warming it against Deseillign’s frigid nights and holding it against the tides of war.

  But still war came, war and pestilence. The Old Dominion seethed with it. The Middle Kingdom had been decimated by it, leaving large tracts of the mountains as empty as the Waste that lay just outside the palace doors. And the ice advanced, encroaching on its daughter the desert with each passing year. But hope was nigh. By the grace of the gods, the Prince of Time had come.

  At the end of the trail, the castle ruins of Merioneth rose into view, the gray stones burnished by the sun to a silvery sheen, the grassy meadows abloom with mountain lilies. When last she’d been home, in winter when the monk had come, the Court had been bound in Ilmarryn ice and covered in snow. A season had passed since then, and the prince had been found.

  Heart of a warrior, courage of a saint, powers of a mage...

  “Sticks,” she swore softly. She
was no saint, and no Ilmarryn to have magical powers. She was a good fighter, but not the best. That designation went to the Night Watchers. Yet she and the prince were bound by duty. There was no room for doubt on her part, especially self-doubt.

  An increase in activity near the Queen’s Quarters heralded Au Cade’s arrival, and as Avallyn watched, the ebony-skinned queen of the White Palace appeared, a regal form in a flaming orange gown trailing retainers across the sward.

  The queen joined the priestess Palinor on the dais, and taking a fortifying breath, Avallyn stepped out of the woods.

  ~ ~ ~

  Palinor sighted her daughter immediately, the desert-worn figure coming out of the trees, and felt a familiar pride laced with resignation replace her fears of the last days. The girl had dirt on her face. Palinor could see it even from a distance, the band of sand and dust across her nose, between where her vision visor had protected her eyes and her turban had been wrapped across her mouth and chin.

  Avallyn had been partially raised at the Court and knew the subtleties of custom and etiquette as well as any, and had typically chosen to ignore them. But for her daughter’s appearance this day, perhaps Palinor had only herself to blame. She’d sent a message for haste, not protocol.

  She gestured to the younger of the two novices serving her, directing the girl’s attention to Avallyn. The novice bowed slightly before slipping away, and soon enough Palinor saw her making her way across the bailey toward Avallyn, carrying a basket of lavender-scented towels. Palinor would prefer Avallyn to stand before the tribune with at least a clean face.

  “She’s a lovely mess, as usual,” a silky voice said at her side. “Are you so certain that the sight of her won’t send the prince running?”

  Palinor turned to Tamisk, the Ilmarryn mage, her gaze taking in the indigo runes tattooed in curving swirls up the side of his face, the deep blue lines a stark contrast to his fair skin, the letters marking him as an adept of the Books of Lore. A silver disk incised with a square rimmed in gold and inset with a triangle of carnelian hung from a cord around his neck, matching the medallion she wore. He was dressed in rich browns and forest greens, the colors of his world. Bracelets in the guise of snakes coiled around each of his wrists, their tongues and eyes and scales intricately wrought in silver, the color of his magic.

  “She is a Priestess of the Bones, Tamisk, a White Lady of Death. If the prince is not sent running by those truths, no doubt he can brave the rest,” Palinor said, refusing to rise to his baited comment.

  “No doubt.” Tamisk smiled in return, his eyes a green so deep and pure as to appear unnatural, even for an Ilmarryn. His hair was dark brown streaked with gray, with the fif braid plaited down one side proclaiming him tylwyth teg. “Yet I would ease her way.”

  “Ease her way?” Palinor questioned with an arched eyebrow. “Or set another upon her course?”

  An elegant shrug was her reply.

  “Your daughter is stronger than you think,” Palinor said.

  “And the Prince of Time is not what you expected. He’s not worth risking Avallyn in a journey to the Old Dominion,” Tamisk countered, the subtle censure in his voice daring her to prove him wrong. “Let me send another in her place.”

  Palinor returned her attention to Avallyn, dismissing the mage with her silence. ’Twas an old argument she refused to lose. Ilmarryn, she thought with concealed pique. The fairest of all the gods’ creatures, they were lovely beyond compare, yet Tamisk underestimated Avallyn’s art if he thought the prince would be more easily led by an Ilmarryn maid. And Tamisk did think such, had dared to go so far as to suggest to Au Cade that mayhaps an Ilmarryn could better bend the prince to their will. Au Cade had told Palinor so.

  Half mad, his mind twisted by Carillon wine, Tamisk had whispered in the queen’s ear, repeating the dire words of the Night Watcher captain who had found the man named Morgan. The Prince of Time was a prince of doom, indeed, half mad and beyond Avallyn’s ability to control, his thieving band of miscreants no less than the vilest of the Old Dominion’s tech-trash. Magic, Tamisk had insisted, was the only reliable way of bringing him to heel. Ilmarryn magic.

  Palinor would have none of it. If Avallyn couldn’t bring him in, she couldn’t hold him, and she had to hold him. The Prince of the Fata Ranc Le had been sent to do the White Ladies’ bidding. An Ilmarryn’s fragile beauty might draw his notice, especially if Tamisk so chose, but it was to Avallyn he was bound, and it was to Avallyn he would heel, or she was lost. As for the risk of sending Avallyn to the Old Dominion where the Warmonger might find her, craven though he be, the Warmonger was as naught compared to the destiny she and the prince faced. Too long had the priestesses waited for the future for it not to come to pass as it had been foretold.

  Too long, and yet in the gravest manner possible the words of prophecy had already proved false. Heart of a warrior, courage of a saint, powers of a mage...

  Lies.

  Palinor’s hand closed on the sheath hanging from her jeweled girdle, her fingers tightening around the soft leather and the dagger hilt within.

  All lies.

  Countless years they had waited, and the gods had sent them not a bold warrior, nor a saint, but a madman enslaved by off-world wine and the debaucheries of the Old Dominion. Drunken sot, mercenary, thief, cripple. Raving. Such were the words Dray, captain of the Sha-shakrieg Night Watchers, had used to describe Morgan ab Kynan, and yet in the next breath he had confirmed that the man was indeed the Prince of Doom. The marks were on him. There had been no mistake.

  Palinor followed Avallyn’s progress across the yard and felt her fears rise anew. The girl was a lovely, beautiful mess indeed, her cloak nearly in shreds, her boots and tunic stained red with northern sand, her hair an urchin’s mop of pale blonds and honey golds. Elflocks tangled her silvermost strands. A fif braid tamed a silken swath on the left side of her face. If not for the fairness of her features, she could easily be mistaken for one of the wild boys who roamed the Waste.

  Yet she was fair, a miracle of delicacy and strength—and she had been meant for so much better than the company she faced.

  A thousand regrets rose in Palinor’s breast, but she would hold her course. In the end she would bind her daughter to a lunatic, if need be, to insure that the dread journey was made. The White Palace would not hold forever, not even with Ilmarryn magic as its bulwark. The time weir had long since broken free of its terrestrial bounds, becoming a whiplash of destruction across the cosmos, and the dragons were locked in their watery hole, powerless in their misery.

  She tightened her grip another degree on the sheath, and her fingers warmed with the kindling light of dreamstone. The enchantment was an ancient one, and simple enough for a priestess of Avallyn’s skill. She could cast the prince into sleep and bring him to the northern temple in chains, if he proved too unyielding or too mad. For this, at least, Palinor need not indebt herself to Tamisk. Time enough later for the mage’s conjuring if the prince proved too brutish to bear or too fainthearted for his fate.

  Tamisk would want blood from Avallyn before she left for the Old Dominion. He always wanted the girl’s blood. Ten thousand years in the making, the lifestream running through Avallyn’s veins was the key to the future. It had been no happenstance that had mated Palinor to the mage. She’d been bred to give the world a child, and ’twas the blood of that child that would save them all.

  Seven measures of blood were needed, each dose meant to seal one of the Books of Lore in their chamber. Over the years, hundreds of measures had been given, and yet Tamisk would want more this day to keep the elixir of her lineage fresh for its purpose. Thus far, only three books had been set in place, though rumor had it that this morn Tamisk had once again beseeched and beguiled Au Cade to relinquish the Gratte Bron Le, the Orange Book of Stone. A fair trick, indeed, should he succeed, for the Orange Book had been in the keeping of the Queens of Deseillign since before the Wars of Enchantment.

  But the prince had come, and the time w
as nigh, and the keeping of power was as naught compared to the doom threatening them all. In the end, Au Cade must give the mage what he wanted. She must.

  Avallyn stepped up on the dais, coming first to Palinor. Despite the girl’s calm demeanor, excitement lit her eyes, and Palinor detected the faintest trace of a blush on her cheeks. Avallyn knelt, and Palinor extended a graceful hand for her kiss. ’Twas a lingering touch of soft lips on her skin, a silent recognition of the bond they shared, though in truth Palinor had always been more the priestess than the mother. Now, as the time for Avallyn to leave drew nearer, Palinor felt more keenly than ever before the price she had paid to hold on to her measure of power.

  The girl rose and stepped forward to greet Tamisk.

  “Magia Lord.” She touched her fingers to her chest in a gesture of respect.

  “Fair daughter of Palinor, receive my blessing on this auspicious day,” the mage murmured with a benevolent smile. If there was a slightly cynical edge to that smile, it did not reveal itself in his voice, and Palinor refrained from taking too great an offense. In the end, the prince would be hers.

  “Accept my gift,” Tamisk continued, giving Avallyn a vial of green potion. “Should the prince’s longings prove more potent than prophecy, the potion will effect a cure.”

  Avallyn sent Palinor a glance, complete with raised eyebrow, as she pocketed the vial. Palinor responded with a hand signal for patience. Her daughter’s confusion wouldn’t last long. Au Cade would tell her all.

  Tamisk could have been a little more discreet though, she thought, piqued anew. The truth was bad enough without his cryptic mutterings.

  At the last, Avallyn took her place before the queen and made her obeisance on bended knee beneath the green bower of the Court. As Dragonmere was the heart of the White Palace, so the hilltop carn was the heart of the Court. Merioneth had been its name since the First Age, and though all else changed with the turning of the Wheel, Merioneth it remained, the island fortress of the Starlight-born, resurrected from out of the sand by the Ilmarryn.